Focus has a proven track record in gold discovery, development and production.
The company first transitioned from being an explorer and developer to a producer in 2008, after discovering the high grade Perseverance ore body at the Tindals mine in Coolgardie which it successfully mined at circa 8.0g/t.
In the preceding years, Focus had amassed the largest landholding in the Coolgardie region enabling it to piece together a series of interconnected orebodies which had never been tackled on a large scale due to their historic fragmented ownership.
Off the discovery of Perseverance, Focus was able to initially concentrate on redeveloping the Tindals underground operation successfully mining 5 main orebodies in the underground and delivering approximately 2,500 ounces per vertical metre.
With the foothold of Tindals established, and a maiden year’s gold production of over 50,000oz of gold, Focus worked to recommission the Three Mile Hill plant in Coolgardie which would become a key stepping stone in controlling production.
Three Mile Hill was commissioned on Christmas Day 2009, and was ramped up to its 1.2Mtpa name plate capacity inside six months. With Focus having control of its production from start to finish in Coolgardie, the business was then able to concentrate on targeting other opportunities across its tenements, developing and taking into production both a second smaller underground as well as a series of open pits.
Over this time Focus discovered over 1Moz of gold in Coolgardie, mining over 330,000oz in the process.
In 2011, Focus expanded its presence in WA through the takeover of Crescent Gold acquiring the Laverton Gold project which it successfully turned around at a time of strong gold prices to produce over 100,000oz of gold in its first full year under Focus’ management control.
The acquisition of Crescent enabled Focus to leapfrog its organic growth path, quickly doubling the company’s Mineral Resources to 4.3Moz, tripling Ore Reserves and growing its landholding to over 1,650 sq km of highly prospective tenements across two of Australia’s largest gold producing regions.
By June 2013, Focus had produced over 475,000oz of gold from Coolgardie and Laverton.
Today Focus has one of the strongest bank balances of any gold explorer in Australia, a strategic partnership with leading global gold producer in Shandong Gold.
During the first half of 2013, with the significant turmoil experienced in the price of gold, Focus took the strategic decision to suspend mining across all its operations in order to preserve cash in the business and shareholder value in the ground. Focus is using this period to reset the business, taking into account the experience gained from the commencement of Focus’ gold production.
Focus is now focusing on exploration to deliver higher grade, larger scale assets that it can bring back on stream in the future.