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Super Pit ... Super Smart ???

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    Saracen Minerals in $1bn Super Pit gold mine swoop

    The Super Pit at Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.The Super Pit at Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.

    A half share of Kalgoorlie’s iconic Super Pit gold mine is set to be sold to Saracen Minerals Holdings for up to $1.1 billion with the mid-tier miner tipped to launch a $600 million-plus equity raising to fund the deal.

    Barrick Gold is expected to announce on Monday it has sold its 50 per cent stake in the mine to Perth-based Saracen after final bids were lodged on Friday.

    The $2.8bn Saracen had been jostling with Northern Star for the deal, although the remaining 50 per cent operating stake is also expected to come up for sale with owners Newmont Goldcorp also considering offloading its share as part of a cull of non-core mines.

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    Saracen is expected to raise more than $600m for the deal, sources said, with Goldman Sachs and RBC Capital Markets advising on the fundraising.

    Saracen was unavailable for comment late Sunday.

    More than 21 million ounces of gold has been poured since the Super Pit opened 30 years ago, with the massive open pit – for decades the biggest gold mine in Australia – producing about a third of the total gold mined along Kalgoorlie’s Golden Mile since Paddy Hannan sparked the Kalgoorlie gold rush in 1893.

    The Super Pit was the brainchild of controversial WA corporate raider, the late Alan Bond, who spent the 1980s trying to buy up the mining tenements that now make up the massive pit – 3.5km long, 900m wide and 600m deep – which sits within a stone’s throw of the centre of Kalgoorlie.

    But Bond’s dream collapsed under the weight of the debt associated with his corporate empire before the idea lived up to its promise, and his stake in the project was sold to US gold giant Homestake – later taken out by Barrick gold.

    Barrick gave up operating control of the Super Pit to joint venture partner Newmont as it retreated from its Australian operations earlier this decade, and has flirted with selling its stake in the project for some years.

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