history of deflector

Have seen the mention of problems encountered by past operators at the Gullewa Project. Also a link to the broker sell recommendation i posted last weekend also pointed towards past history of problems with the project.

Ive done a little digging and research, here is a quick summary:


In early 1990's - a joint venture was formed between Sons Of Gwalia and National Resource Exploration over some the gullewa tenements. Deflector as we know it today, was first discovered by Sons Of Gwalia.

In mid 90's, National Resource purchased the projects ouright. They then constructed a CIL processing plant to mine the Monarch, New Phoenix, Michelangelo, Deflector and Golden Stream Deposits. They planned to produce around 20k gold a year at costs of around $300.

After about a year or two, mining ceased due to a shortage of mineralized material - in other words, not enough exploration was done or studies done to define the resource at the different deposits.

Late in 1996 National Resource Exploration changed its name to Gullewa Gold NL. In 1998 they sold the project to Western District Corporation. However WDC defaulted and Gullewa withdrew from the agreement.

King Soloman Mines then purchased the project from Gullewa gold in 2000. They did some mine development but never produced any gold through the plant.

In 2002 Menzies Gold Limited purchased the Gullewa project from King Soloman Mines. Gold production re-commenced in April 2002. Menzies planned to mine the open pits at various deposits to fund their drilling and feasability studies at the Deflector deposit. They identified back then Deflector was the main goal of the Gullewa operations.

Production costs from these open pits were higher then first thought - around $650 an ounce. They encountered various groundwater problems in some of these deposits also.

Late 2002 a final feasabilty study was completed on a Deflector underground mine operation. Open pit mining at Deflector also started in this period.

Menzies decided to to mix and treat copper rich deflector ore with other materialized ore. This resulted in the blocking of all of the carbon in the CIL circuit - pretty much shutting down the plant. They eventually restarted operation, but encountered the same problems and by early 2003, the plant was shutdown.

Menzies then went into trading halt, and entered in voluntary administration.

In late 2003 the company refloated under the name Batavia Mining. Over the next 2-3 years, Batavie did exploration drilling at various gullewa deposits and completed various key studies relating exclusively to the Deflector deposit.
These studies found that the treatment through the current CIL plant of mineralized material from deflector were unsuitable due to the presence of copper. That being said, it appears mineralized material from other Gullewa deposits can be highly successfully treated through the current plant.

In 2006 a Feasabilty Study was completed. Total capital costs including life of mine was estimated at around $90million. With gold price of $US662 at the time, the project was only breakeven.

Later examination of this Feasability Study it was determined that the project model was unduly pessimistic in that it overstated operating costs due to such things as calculating a workforce that could sustain twice the proposed production, and other such things such as the overstating of capital costs.

They eventually sold the Project to ATW Gold. ATW did exploration work on the project and discovered Spanish Galleon and Pieces Of Eight, and also hit some nice extensions at Deflector.

ATW gold apparently went broke due to their Burnakura Gold Mine.

This is where Mutiny stepped in, and up till now, have been doing a lot of drilling and studies to make sure this project startup goes to plan.


Just thought i would give this little run down of past event, so investors can get the real story - a lot of people think there is something majorly wrong with the ore at Deflector.

The only thing wrong with it was the operators attempts at processing it and lack of studies into it.

Batavia and ATW identified the processing of the ore at Deflector needed modifying, now Mutiny have set out a clear processing method that will produce gold and a gold/copper concentrate - that will result in 93%+ gold recoveries.

Its easy to just imply the project has something wrong with it due to its past. Hopefully this enlightens a few investors who do not know its full history.