Dunbar said on a Mining Journal Gold Investor Series webinar Gascoyne was examining a build-own-operate (BOO) project delivery structure that would enable the company to leverage an external contractor’s balance sheet in getting the proposed A$75 million (US$55 million), 100,000ozpa Dalgaranga gold project into production by the end of next year. The company is also looking at long-lead-time project items it can order early to speed development.

It’s A$76 million market capitalisation in April had grown beyond $140 million at the end of last week.

Gascoyne is cashed up after last month’s A$15 million equity-fund raising and looking to finalise Dalgaranga feasibility studies that will put it in a position to make a project go-ahead decision early next year. Strong project economics were exhibited in the pre-feasibility study results delivered in March this year. The current Dalgaranga development timeline has plant commissioning underway in the December quarter, 2017.

“There are some long lead-time items we can secure that we can secure sooner than traditionally you would, which could compress that development timeframe by about a quarter,” Dunbar said.

“There are opportunities to finance and develop going down the build-own-operate path rather than the traditional debt-and-equity path. If we can do that and use a construction company’s balance sheet to help build our project that could speed the development timelines up.

“The gold price has … rarely been as strong as it is now [in Australian-dollar terms]. The market sentiment is starting to turn and opportunities to develop assets are, right now in my opinion, the cheapest they will ever be. There is a huge amount of competitive tension out there among suppliers and construction contractors … and also with the diesel price where it is in Australian-dollar terms … there really hasn’t been a better time to be developing an asset probably in the last 20-30 years in my opinion.

“The thing that could push it [project start-up] back is discovery.

“If our exploration finds the motherlode, so to speak, we’ll have to reassess that [development plan].”

Dunbar said Gascoyne had been flying under the radar for 4-5 years, quietly building its resource base from 200,000oz to more than two million ounces, as it moved Dalgaranga forward and established Glenburgh in the Gascoyne region as a second key project. This year’s share-price rise and the success of the recent capital-raising, on the back of Dalgaranga studies and the exploration results achieved to date, had seen the company emerge “from the wilderness”.

“Having just completed the capital raising we are going to be pushing the feasibility forward but we will be far more aggressive with exploration.

“We have done extensive [aeromagnetic and other] surveys at Dalgaranga to better define the targets we have and the mineralised trends we can see in the aeromag, which will clearly assist in where we focus our drilling. But we [now have] three drill rigs on site … I would not have anticipated that 6-9 months ago … and plan to do a lot of drilling and I think over the next 3-6 months that will bear fruit in terms of more discoveries at Dalgaranga.

“We’ve already got six years [resource/reserve base] at 100,000ozpa … and we see that growing substantially. But on top of that we will be doing a lot more work at our Glenburgh gold project as well.

“Glenburgh is a craton-margin style of deposit and these deposits worldwide are very large systems. It’s the only large-scale gold system that’s been discovered in this entire district so far and we’ve tied up the entire district – over 70km of strike length so far. The closest analogy to the Glenburgh system in WA is actually Tropicana, where they [AngloGold Ashanti and Independence Group] have about 8moz gold system so far.

“The shield margin [type] deposits, as they’re called in Canada … can be tens of millions of ounces in size. And so I think the market is yet to appreciate the potential of Glenburgh. It’s a large system that could turn Gascoyne from a 100,000ozpa producer into a plus-200kozpa producer.

“It’s a massive system and it has potential to be a 3-5moz system if not larger, so we’ll certainly be pushing that exploration target going forward and using the cash flow to come out of Dalgaranga to help push that forward, and evaluate that district more fully.”

For more on Gascoyne’s exploration outlook, and plans for a high-margin gold project on what is a low-grade (average 1.4gpt) resource base at Dalgaranga, you can listen to the full webcast for free at https://t.co/YKrvaF11Y9