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Lihir eyes new assets

Lihir Gold is clearly trying to put its disastrous foray into Ballarat behind it, as evidenced by it writing down the entire value of the project on Wednesday. That means any sales price achieved with help from Prime Corporate Finance of Perth will be a positive.

The miner is expected to provide more insight into its future strategy at a briefing next Friday.

Lihir has a growing interest in Africa after buying Equigold last year, and there are suggestions it is running the ruler over assets in that region.

Of the Australian-listed goldminers, Mineral Deposits, now worth $380 million, could make an attractive purchase. It has an open register, and its new mine in Senegal had cash costs of just $US350 an ounce in the June quarter. However, the large Canadian goldminer IAMGOLD recently bought a 17 per cent stake in Mineral Deposits' Senegal neighbour, Oromin Explorations, so IAMGOLD could prove a hurdle to any bid from Lihir.

Resolute Mining could also be of some interest, although its operations in Tanzania and Mali are relatively high-cost.