Gold Fields has finally sold the Arctic Platinum Project, which has been in its portfolio for 18 years and never advanced beyond exploration, numerous studies and hopes by the board it would be a mine one day. The Finnish arm of London-based private equity group CD Capital Natural Resources Fund made the purchase, paying over $40m in cash for the project and agreeing to a 2% smelter royalty on all metals produced. It ends a long chapter in Gold Fields’s history since it and its then partner, Finland’s Outokumpu, a metals and technology firm, said in 2000 they had found a 2.9-million ounce platinum group metals (PGMs) deposit in northern Finland. Despite extensive drilling to grow the size of the resource and gain critical mass to justify a mine and concentrator, plans for a mine just never took off. For years afterwards, Gold Fields executives spoke of drilling, studies and pending decisions on whether to build a mine that would primarily generate palladium, with platinum, copper an...
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