AXG - Antipodes Gold [formerly GEL - Glass Earth]

[elZorro]

Glass Earth Gold to consolidate shares on issue

By Simon Hartley
Created 23/10/13

Listed gold explorer Glass Earth Gold has gained shareholder approval to consolidate the number of shares on issue, with 10 old shares to be reissued as one new share.
Glass Earth has exited its long-standing Otago exploration programmes, having spent the bulk of $40 million around the province, selling its alluvial gold operations recently for about $1.75 million to local interests to refocus on targets in the central North Island.
While having successfully recapitalised several times during the past eight years, that came at the cost of share dilution. During the past year, Glass Earth shares had traded from a 42c-high last November, to 2c or less since September.
The consolidation is still subject to approval from the Toronto stock exchange's venture exchange.
Glass Earth will resume exploration of the WKP project near Waihi, in a joint venture with Newmont Mining, while exploration activities at its Neavesville (Coromandel) project are delayed as negotiations with local iwi over access continue. simon.hartley@odt.co.nz

Over 200,000 shares sold on the TSX overnight at C1c. This values the company at just C$1mill. We know they're running low on funds, so it's little wonder the market doesn't think much of GEL in the meantime. They are going to have to endure some pain for a while.

I can't help but compare this share with XRO. They're still losing money too. The difference is the possibility of a big buyout for XRO, long before they need to get into profit. Maybe they're a lot more organised also.

[elZorro]

670,000 GEL shares sold yesterday on the TSX, for 1.5c. All up cost for those was about C$10,000. There is a pattern shown on the private placements for GEL of a small placement followed by a bigger one 2-3 months later. Except the last small PP was in March 2013.

http://web.tmxmoney.com/quote.php?qm_symbol=gel

http://www.glassearthgold.com/s/ShareStructure.asp

[elZorro]

GEL made a lot of noise about Garibaldi, but obviously lacked the funds to have a proper look there. Garibaldi Gold Ltd has a permit application in (55760) that completely surrounds the Sparrowhawk permit that GEL still has. Garibaldi Gold is just another company related to Hardie Resources in Wellington. They seem to be well funded, private, with fingers in pies all over the place. A lot of new permits held. They have a coal permit in Southland called Loudon Hill (Permit 54495) which is a placename down there.

[clifton]

More drilling results out still positive
MINE: GEL: Further Drilling Results for WKP

GEL
08/11/2013 08:30
MINE

REL: 0830 HRS Glass Earth Gold
Limited

MINE: GEL: Further Drilling Results for WKP

Wellington,
New Zealand, Thursday 7 November 2013

Glass Earth Gold announces Further
Drilling Results for the Wharekirauponga
(WKP) Gold Project, Hauraki, New
Zealand

Glass Earth Gold Limited (TSXV-GEL; NZAX-GEL) ("Glass Earth Gold or GEG") is pleased to announce the drilling results for holes 38 and 39 in
the (Easternzone) of the WKP Wharekirauponga (WKP) Gold Project, Hauraki, New Zealand.
The WKP Project is held by the Hauraki Joint Venture ("HJV") - Newmont Waihi Gold (65%) and GEG (35%) and is located in the southern Hauraki Goldfield, 10km north of the Martha Gold Mine (Newmont Waihi Gold100%).

Highlights of the drilling results include high grade zones of 1.5m at 20.9 g/t Au, 0.5 metres at 26.4 g/t Au, and 0.8 metres at 9.77 g/t Au. As well broad intersections of lower grade mineralization include 517 metres at 0.46 g/t Au plus 454.5 metres of 0.46 g/t Au.


The President and Chief Executive Officer of Glass Earth Gold, Simon Henderson, commented on the results: "With the completion of drill holes 38 and 39, the Company has completed 9,035m of drilling on the WKP property. The latest drill holes have targeted the Eastern graben structure which hosts mineralization similar to the major gold mines in the vicinity, with continuing intersections of broad widths of modest grade, and narrow high grade individual intersections.
The area continues to tantalise with its significant volumes of mineralisation, however recent resource work points to the Central/Western zones as the most promising higher grade structures to concentrate further work".

Future technical work will be aimed at improving the size and grade of the broader high grade T-Stream gold-silver vein system (Central and Western zones). The exploration team is encouraged by the high grade potential of the T-Stream system, resources by zone offering higher grade estimates; Central zone 6.6 g/t Au, and Western zone 9.7 g/t Au respectively, with significant expansion potential.

The objective is to expand the limits of these known higher grade veins, test the selected targets for the presence of additional mineralization, collect preliminary environmental background data, and conduct preliminary metallurgical testing to assist the preparation of future Mineral Resource estimates.

The WKP project, which has emerged as the company's flagship project, hosts a NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate of the inferred category of 1.3 million tonnes at an average grade of 6.1 g/t Au and 9.3 g/t Ag for a total of 260,000 ounces of gold and 390,000 ounces of silver, at a cut-off grade of 3.0 g/t of gold (news release 1 August 2013).

Cost-containment measures

In the light of the unfavourable environment that severely affects junior exploration companies, Glass Earth Gold has carried out a major cost-cutting exercise which aims at building resilience by containing its operational and administrative costs to a minimum. A major overhaul of the operations has led to the sale of non-strategic assets and a refocus on exploration led by WKP as lead project.
The team has been downsized to two full-time employees and four consultants and part-timers, which has enabled the Company to maintain
access to core skills and effectively pursue the projects.

[elZorro]

Thanks for that Clifton. Not bad grades when they hit the veins. But perhaps a bit too far apart and not intense enough to be interesting practically. Looks like they (Newmont) are going to do more infill drilling in the best known areas. This would add to the NI 43-101 estimate over time. I can't even be bothered having a look to see where those EG drills were exactly on the permit.

So now the fulltime GEL staff is down to two people, this may be Peter Liddle (Auckland) and Simon Henderson. Andrew Hamilton (IT) may be one of the part-timers, based in Wellington with Simon. Looking at it from one perspective Clifton, this is a very cheap company now (I've had a hard lesson in how cheap it is). Whether it is viable for anything in future, is the other perspective.

[elZorro]

Not good news for GEL holders, Newmont is looking at a massive downsizing of the mining staff in Waihi for a six month period starting in the middle of next year. This is presumably because the granting of approvals for the Correnso Mine took a bit longer than they'd hoped, and other mines will be out of ore soon. They have already heavily reduced the exploration staff. Without strong cashflows from the Waihi operations, it's unlikely the Newmont head office in Denver will be too excited about WKP. There is still the Waihi West area under the other part of Waihi township to consider of course.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times...-Waihi-economy

You can see their problem: yes, they are the number two gold producer, but the true costs to extract the gold are now US$1149 an ounce overall (2012), and the market price is currently not that far above that.

http://www.newmont.com/about/company-glance

Jobs have also been lost at head office earlier this year.

And then the situation got worse, all-in costs more like US$1500 an ounce.
http://www.proactiveinvestors.com/co...oll-46526.html

[elZorro]

Sometimes you just have to call time when everything is turning against you. do you think GEL will do this?

I've been told that the company (GEL) must suffer some pain for a few months. This appears to be the feeling in Canada. I can imagine some of the more recent Brent Cook investors saying that. Newmont has not moved out of Waihi, and as they are only working in 7 countries around the world, it's still a good endorsement. Correnso is a smallish but rich find, they'll certainly work that out, and if you are a longer-term gold bug you'd think that we'll see gold going over US$1800 again soon enough. WKP would be an interesting longer-term project for Newmont, and the calls from business owners after a 6 month drop in income for the Waihi region may help to sway public opinion.

GEL has had permits on a heap of areas, possibly unlucky there weren't any massive easy finds near the surface or in the places they could afford to drill after doing the aero mapping. This meant that the funds to do more detailed exploration haven't been forthcoming since, but they also used up C$32mill of shareholder money since 2006. They definitely failed to create their own cash in the placer permits, for a number of reasons, some of which were in their control, some not.

GEL have hunkered down, left with permits near their most friendly NZ firm with capital for gold exploration - Newmont. Some on the board think that this is what they should have done all along -concentrate all the effort on just a couple of permit areas that look most promising. Very hard to do when they had a look around a big chunk of NZ, and there was lots of promise in most of it.

GEL should now be able to survive with a small amount of G&A expenses, and I think they'll wait for the gold price to move up again, just like Newmont will be watching and waiting.

[elZorro]

Yankiwi, I still have a small indicator holding in GEL, but it might make you feel a bit better to know that I lost a fair bit more on GEL than you did. They did always warn us it was a risky share. But no amount of FA work made up for the lack of real information about the true and quickly changing state of affairs. They never seemed to catch a lucky break either.

[elZorro]

elZ, no matter how much you have made or lost on GEL makes the taste in my mouth any sweeter. I think Simon might be good at finding rock in the ground that a lot of others would pass by, but that's about where it ends. IMHO he has no idea how to run a business. Placer mining was pie in the sky thinking which nearly cost me my entire investment. Maybe they should have just closed up the entire shop at that point & given us "Shareholders" the right to go down south and do a little panning of our own. That would have left a better taste and there's a good chance you & I could have been face to face with a few nuggets in our hands.

Anyways, I'm moving on with head held high. Maybe I'll find a 10/1 shot in the greyhounds and see if I can turn the $1750 into $17500, back where it all started. If that bet is placed on another preverbial "dog", it'll be a easier lesson to swallow.

Yankiwi, that is all so true. Except maybe for finding nuggets at Drybread. Sounds like the gold was very grainy and well down. Our investment was derailed, that's what happened. A bit like this dump truck. This photo never made it into the media reports from GEL..and apparently is just part of the sorry story of misadventure.

[cammo]

a mate of mine who lives down there and is a mech eng (who was up here last week) said that they bluntly refused to put in a proper road, which meant the trucks were running in deep sludge in winter and hydraulic brakes dont mind a bit of water but sludge - At 50k per truck for a brake overhaul, apparently they did like 6 over the winter due to not metalling some access road. Apparently a lot of guffaws from the local industry about goings on there...why didnt i ask earlier?