It has been associated with most commodities, including uranium and the hot rocks of the geothermal industry. And while managing director Chris Giles acknowledges this butterfly syndrome, he ruefully admits: “Being a junior, you have to follow what is popular, you have no choice.”

But that is about to change, as development of the Portia gold mine takes shape on the Curnamona  Province of South Australia.

About 120km northwest of Broken Hill, Havilah is working in partnership with a Silver City mining contractor CMC. The contract is an interesting one because it is being done on a shared risk/shared revenue basis with the prospect of Havilah producing cash flow in 2016, with no mining risk.

Work in the pit began at the end of March, 2015, and by early January this year, Havilah reported that stripping was taking place just 17m above the ore zone.

Giles was recently in Perth with chief financial officer Walter Richards to update investors about progress being made at Portia and the pyramid of projects scheduled to follow it.

The chameleon has found its true colours and they are gold and copper.

“By the end of 2016 we should, according to our calculations – and all going well – we will have $40 million in the bank. We have a big inventory of copper and gold and other resources,” said Giles. Between Portia, North Portia, Kalkaroo and Mutooroo there is about 173 million tonnes of ore containing 915,500t copper and 2.4 million ounces of gold.

“This will underpin mining production for the next 15 years, at a reasonable rate for a junior company. We have been very successful at exploration. The terrain is just as prospective as it ever was. Given funds, we expect to make more discoveries.”

In terms of share price, Giles said Havilah had suffered the same fate as many juniors. “But with Portia getting underway, we have started to make a comeback and we don’t see why that shouldn’t continue when we get cashflow. Cashflow is king these days.”

Geologist Giles said the geology in that part of the Curnamona Province was a continuation of the Broken Hill block, and was particularly prospective for copper and gold – not unlike prospectivity of the neighbouring Gawler Craton which has the same-age rocks. “But there is still the possibility of finding another Broken Hill out there. Certainly, there is a lot of copper and gold.”

Permitting took “a long time” and debt funding almost impossible to secure for a junior, such as Havilah, contemplating building its first mine. “We really had to scratch our heads about how to get this thing going.”

Fortunately, CMC had some spare equipment at the time Havilah wanted to get going on Portia and as they employ about 600 people, the proprietor, Steve Radford, did not want to put them on the street as it is a family-style business, Giles said.

“So he decided to take all the mining risk at Portia and we came to a deal with Steve that it is his responsibility remove all the overburden, which is about 70m thick, get into the ore and bring it up to surface, and it would be our responsibility to process it. So he is hoping there is gold down there more than we are, I can tell you! So it is a big risk for him as he is funding it with his cashflow, and the payoff for him will be he gets 50% of the gold we produce.”

Giles adds that the NPV works out about the same as if Havilah had to pay for the earthworks to be done at normal contract rates. “And we don’t have the mining risk. It is a far better deal for Havilah. Because it is a small mine, 50,000 ounces or so, it will all be over in 18 months or so. In any other longer term mine it would not work but for Portia, where it is gravity and simply recoverable gold it was a viable means to finance the mine.”

In late November last year, 50% of the overburden had been removed, which comprises mainly sand and clay. “No one has ever dug a pit this deep, down to 70m, in South Australia, so how the pit wall stands up is an unknown, we have done what tests we can but at the end of the day, we have to dig it to find out. The angle of the pitwall is fairly shallow, at 30 degrees, which is unheard of here in WA, but that’s the price we pay for mining soft material.

“The contractor promises he will have first ore on the surface on July 1 (2016) and he is a man of word so we don’t doubt him.”

He said the intention was to mine out the open pit, and then drill and sample what underlies the coarse, free gold orebody.

Processing would be through a trommel and two 36-inch diameter state-of-the-art Knelson concentrators at a rate of 120 tonnes per hour. Giles said the plant was being built and would be installed at site in February and March, 2016.

The Knelson concentrators are fully automatic and self-cleaning. “So you can program them to stop every six hours and will stop for 45 seconds when jets of water will blast out material that gets caught in the grooves,” Giles said, adding that the concentrators, in parallel, would recover gold down to 20 microns in size.

Portia is all-consuming right now but once it is up and running, Havilah will turn its attention to North Portia (235,000oz gold and 100,000t copper) which is nearby on the same mining lease.

And the next cab off the rank will be Havilah’s flagship Kalkaroo project, which contains 445,000oz gold and 622,000t copper.

Also nearby is the partially drilled out Mutooroo deposit, a massive sulphide orebody containing 192,000t and 17,500t cobalt.