Jabiru Takes Prized Mineral Region

The Age

Wednesday March 28, 2007

Barry FitzGerald

JABIRU Metals has won the crowded race for exploration rights to the Benambra copper/zinc deposits in East Gippsland's alpine region.

The State Government announced the win by Jabiru from a field of 13 contenders. Jabiru was suspended from trade ahead of a price-sensitive announcement but had not reported the victory to the stock exchange by the close of trade.

Boom metal prices make Benambra a prized catch. But it has not always been that way, with its being the site of one of Victoria's biggest ever mining environmental clean-ups.

The Department of Primary Industries has spent $5.8 million cleaning up the property in the upper catchment of the Tambo River after the previous owner, Denehurst, went bust after mining the deposits between 1992 and 1996. Low commodity prices and zinc recovery problems at the time were partly to blame for the closure.

After the award-winning clean-up, in which plant and equipment were also removed, the DPI called for expressions of interest for the rights to explore and potentially mine the deposits. It used old Denehurst figures to promote the idea that the deposits "may contain resources valued up to $US2 billion ($A2.47 million)".

After the Benambra property closed in 1996 - it was originally a WMC discovery in 1978 - it was optioned by Denehurst's administrator to a newly floated company called Austminex. But Benambra proved to be a heartbreaker for Austminex as well, and it walked away in late 2001, leaving the clean-up to the DPI.

-- BARRY FitzGERALD

© 2007 The Age

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