by:Paul Garvey From:The Australian February 13, 201312:00AM
JOE Gutnick, Mark Creasy and Eduard Eshuys are set to rekindle their professional association in the desert of central Western Australia, with the trio's respective gold plays possibly joining forces.
Mr Gutnick and Mr Eshuys, who worked together closely at Great Central Mines for 12 years before it was swallowed by Normandy Mining, are in talks over a possible partnership between the former's new venture, Blackham Resources, and the latter's Apex Minerals.
Blackham owns the 1.5 million ounce Matilda gold project, which sits within 26km of Apex's Wiluna processing plant and mine.
Apex yesterday announced it was investigating the potential to process ore from Mr Creasy's private vehicle Bagoda Gold through the Wiluna plant.
Mr Gutnick helped deliver Mr Creasy's first major windfall when Great Central bought two discoveries off Mr Creasy for $117 million in a 1991 deal that made him the country's best-known (and most successful) prospector.
. . . Speaking to The Australian after Apex yesterday announced the Bagoda Gold talks and the separate sale of its non-core Youanmi gold deposit for $15m, Mr Eshuys said the company was also looking into possible ways to work with Blackham.
"There's certainly potential; there's no reason why (a deal with Blackham) couldn't happen. It's just whether we can structure the deal," Mr Eshuys said.
"We have the processing plant, they have the resources: I would have thought there's enough reasons to try and work something out."
Mr Eshuys said Blackham, Apex and Bagoda Gold had about 4 million ounces of gold resources between them, and the time and cost of building a new plant meant using the existing Wiluna plant as a central processing facility made sense.
