Saturday 7th June 2025. A wet and windy day in Adelaide and I'm getting over the flu, so have been sitting in my office with the heater on eating reheated Mexican food, soup and porridge (not in that order) and enjoying MoM's deep dive into the history of Australia's largest gold miner, Northern Star Resources (NST) that MoM released 1 hour ago (earlier this arvo).

How Northern Star Became Australia’s Biggest Gold Miner, Money of Mine, Jun 7, 2025

[Money of Mine Podcast]

Show notes:

How does a shell company turn into Australia’s biggest gold miner, capped at nearly $30 billion?

In this episode, we unpack the fascinating story of Northern Star — from 2c a share to over $20, securing world-class assets across multiple continents, including the Australia’s greatest gold mine, the Super Pit.

We trace the company’s journey, get in the weeds on their M&A approach, and highlight the characters who shaped it — with a focus on the early days at Paulsens, the deal that set Northern Star on its path, and culminating with the coronation of the “King of Kalgoorlie.”

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▶️ CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Introduction

04:05 Paulsens

30:10 Plutonic

34:11 East Kundana & Kanowna Belle

42:57 Jundee

57:18 South Kalgoorlie

58:50 Pogo

1:10:48 Echo

1:13:15 Super-Pit

1:19:18 Saracen

1:25:27 Learnings

1:36:59 Shout out

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--- end of show notes ---

Here's a small transcript from near the beginning:

"In May 2010, they come out with an announcement that they're going to acquire the Paulsens Gold Mine; The company has a mighty market cap of under $8 million, and the share price is four and a half cents, so... how's that for a starting point?"

--- end of transcript ---

For those who may not be aware, Bill Beament, prior to becoming the MD of NST, which was just a shell at that point (and later becoming it's Executive Chairman when Bill brought Stuey Tonkin across to NST and made him CEO in Nov 2016), held several senior management positions, including General Manager of Operations for Barminco Limited with overall responsibility for 12 mine sites across Western Australia; Bill had also been the General Manager of the Eloise Copper Mine in Queensland.

At Barminco, Bill was responsible for Barminco's mining services (contract mining) contracts at 12 mines, and one of those 12 was Intrepid Mining's Paulsens gold mine, and Bill clearly thought he could run that mine a lot better than Intrepid (the mine owners) were at that time. Intrepid Mines had deprioritised Paulsens in favor of Indonesian projects where they thought they'd get more bang for their bucks. Intrepid were therefore not spending the money at Paulsens to define how far the gold extended or even to run the mine efficiently as it was.

This proved to be a disastrous decision for Intrepid, whose experience with Indonesian mines, specifically the Tujuh Bukit project, was marked by significant disputes and ultimately, a loss of control over the project. While the company initially made promising discoveries and saw potential in the region, it faced challenges with its local partner and legal issues in Indonesia, leading to a major loss of investment, and a protracted legal battle, and accusations of fraud, severely negatively impacting shareholder value and leading to a CEO resignation.

Intrepid Mines Limited ultimately merged with AIC Resources in 2019, becoming AIC Mines. This followed a failed takeover offer by Intrepid for AIC.

Meanwhile, the gold mine that Intrepid Mining were happy to divest back in 2010, Paulsens, did VERY well under NST ownership, and is still being mined today, this time by Black Cat Syndicate (BC8) who bought the mine from NST in 2022 and have extended its mine life through successful regional exploration in the surrounding area within tenements that they (BC8) own.

However, back in the day, from 2010, Paulsens became the foundation of NST's extraordinary success that today sees Northern Star with a share price of circa $21/share, a market capitalisation of $30 Billion, being an ASX50 company, Australia's largest gold miner, and one of the 10 largest gold mining companies in the world, and the only Australian-domiciled gold miner in that list.

And they are certainly still growing - they're in the middle of doubling the mill capacity at Fimiston (the Super Pit, a.k.a. KCGM), and have bought De Grey Mining for $5 Billion recently, so NST now own Hemi, the largest known undeveloped gold deposit in Australia.

It's quite a story and well worth a listen/watch: How Northern Star Became Australia’s Biggest Gold Miner [MoM podcast, Saturday afternoon, 7th June, 2025]

Disc: Yes, of course I hold NST shares! [both here and in my SMSF]