A new company with dreams of turning the Falklands into a second South Africa was launched yesterday to prospect for gold on the peat- covered islands invaded by Argentina 22 years ago.
Falkland Island Holdings (FIH), the main commercial operation on the islands, said it had secured financing from hedge fund RAB Capital to explore the whole region – an area of some 14,000 square kilometres.
David Hudd, a former leisure industry executive, now chairing FIH, said: “We have already found some traces of gold but, as most of the terrain is covered by peat, we need an aeromagnetic survey to find out what’s really there.”
He explained that when south America, including the Falklands, and southern Africa were one land mass hundreds of millions of years ago, rock formations could be found on the islands similar to the rich gold-bearing structures of South Africa.
RAB, which has invested heavily in the mining industry, is to put up $1.2m (pounds 630,000) towards a $1.5m minerals exploration programme backed by FIH’s joint venture partners, Cambridge Mineral Resources and Global Petroleum.
The new company, Falklands Minerals, will be 22.5% owned by FIH – which also owns and runs the Upland Goose hotel at Port Stanley made famous during the Falklands war and the islands’ main store, as well as a fishing business.
The listed company, in which directors Leonard Licht and Sir Harry Soloman own a 29% stockholding between them, made pre-tax earnings of pounds 300,000 on pounds 4.9m sales in 2002. The company is already prospecting for oil in the south Atlantic.
