More details are filtering out about the sale process for the Ravenswood gold mine in Queensland, with sources reporting about five parties are in the second round of the competition.
The understanding is only one Australian bidder — Regis Resources — and one from China are left, and the rest are likely from Indonesia.
The Chinese suitor is understood to be Chifeng — the Shanghai-listed group which in 2020 purchased the Bibiani Gold Mine in Ghana from the Australian-listed Resolute Mining for $US105m.
That came two years after buying the Sepon gold-copper mine in Laos from MMG.
But, dominating the competition are bidders from Indonesia, with groups in the mix expected to be United Tractors and Indonesia’s billionaire Salim family with its company Mach Metals.
Mach is the group which last year bid $393m for South Australian copper play Rex Minerals.
The Australian reported last year Salim Group has had a long presence as an investor in the Australian resources sector and is best known on the east coast for its acquisition of the Mount Pleasant coal mine in NSW from Rio Tinto in 2015 for $US180m.
But, not all of its Australian investments have been successful, with the group having lost heavily on multiple attempts to restart the historic Windimurra vanadium mine in WA.
The understanding is that are coming in at around $US1bn ($1.6bn).
Expectations are that all parties will enter the next round, but may need to take some time to fully investigate the merits of buying Ravenswood.
As earlier reported, the competition is run by Azure Capital and UBS. Evolution Mining and Gold Road Resources were thought to have taken an initial look, but are not involved.
Global groups have put forward higher offers than local groups, say sources, and earlier expectations were that the mine could sell for about $2bn.
The lucrative Ravenswood mine, 130km south of Townsville, generates about 200,000 ounces of gold annually.
Owen Hegarty’s EMR Capital owns it jointly with Singapore-based Golden Energy Resources, backed by money from Indonesia.
EMR Capital led a consortium which purchased Ravenswood in 2020 from Resolute Mining for up to $300m.
It has substantially grown its production since, through heavy investment which was needed for the mine’s life extension to at least 15 years from 2022.
Shares in the $2.8bn Regis Resources closed on Friday at $3.71, up 7c.
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