Business South August 2020

40 | Volume 29 | Issue 4 businesssouth Minerals West Coast and the West Coast Commercial Goldminers’ Association — Proud to be the voice for West Coast miners. “If we cannot get land access, mining in the Coast will grind to a halt. There’s a little bit of private land that can be mined but the bulk of it is in Stewardship land.” MINING - WEST COAST » West Coast Gold Association Plea to unlock access to vast gold resource Treasure trove: West Coast gold is amongst the purist in the world. Richard Loader W hile the gold rush days are over, gold worth billions of dollars remains entombed in the West Coast’s land, rock and soils - the vast majority of it Stewardship land - and frustratingly unable to be touched. Encompassing 40% of the entire West Coast, Stewardship land was once owned by Timberlands West Coast Limited, the State Owned Enterprise established to manage the Coast’s native and exotic forests for the now defunct New Zealand Forest Service. President of the West Coast Gold Miners Associa- tion, Brett Cummings says trying to gain access to Stewardship land and unlocking the vast trove of gold is the major issue facing the Association, which represents the interests of the region’s gold miners. “All of that land is low quality conservation land. Most of the land was clear felled and burnt ready for planting trees - it just didn’t get planted in trees,” says Brett. “But the current Government thinks it’s the best rejuvenating kahikatea forest in the world - which it is, but they don’t understand that it will regenerate again once the gold miners have completed their restoration work returning it to how it was before digger hit soil.” Required by law to restore land used for gold and coal mining, West Coast miners developed Vegeta- tion Direct Transfer (VDT), a method where sods of intact plants and soil are moved intact from stripped areas. “Basically you use a wheel loader to pick up all the trees, shrubs and moss, take it away and put it on land that has already been mined. “You continue that process as part of the restora- tion process, leaving restored land that is pretty hard to tell where you have been.” Along with Minerals West Coast as a collective voice of mining in the Coast, Brett says the Associa- tion’s efforts to gain access to mine Stewardship land have to date been fruitless. “There’s billions of dollars worth of gold around here. A phenomenal amount of gold has already come out of the Coast but we’ve really only touched the surface of what’s actually here. “If we cannot get land access, mining in the Coast will grind to a halt. There’s a little bit of private land that can be mined but the bulk of it is in Stewardship land. “It’s a shame when the country is going to be up for billions of dollars because of Covid and there’s all this gold sitting there in the ground.” While not all operating at once, there are about 60 mines between Murchison all the way down to Lake Ianthe, and black sand gold all the way down to Franz Jospeh. In the region of 600oz of gold is extracted each week from the Coast with a value of $2700 per ounce with an average yearly production is 30,000ozs. “West Coast gold is amongst the purist in the world running between 94-96% purity. “Most of the Coast’s gold gets melted into bars and then transported to Australian refineries and turned into pure gold. It has to be 99% to be gold bullion.” Mining by hand and the sluicing methods of yesteryear inhibited the ability to mine many parts of the West Coast, while modern machinery, excavators, bull dozers, dump tucks and pumps en- able miners to reach the upper hills not previously possible. Though extraction costs have undoubtedly increased, the efficiency and safety of extraction has also increased. PROJECT AND PRESENCE… PROFILE? Talk to us today, the feature profile experts. Phone: 03 983 5500 Fax: 03 983 5552 waterfordpress.co.nz Passionate about the industry that has occupied most of his 58 years, Brett argues that gold mining causes no permanent injury to the planet and gold is something that has an increasing need and demand. “The market for gold keeps increasing and more and more is being used in electronics componentry. It’s not all about jewellery.”