Mark Mentiplay

The crucial importance of research and industry-specific education to sustain Australia’s, and particularly Western Australia’s, booming resources sector has never been more vital.

With the major iron ore miners lifting production to cash in on continuing strong demand from China, the growing number of small emerging producers shows no signs of slowing down.

This year, Western Australia will move closer to becoming a world leader in genetic research, underpinning its potential to become an international powerhouse in the wider field of medical research.

Alan Carpenter plans to retain a role in the crucial state development portfolio after he is sworn in as Western Australian Premier at Government House tomorrow morning.

Perth's Aurox Resources Ltd has clinched a deal potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the aspiring Pilbara vanadium producer with one of Europe’s biggest companies.

A new Western Australian gold float is being prepared to breathe life back into the rich Chalice gold mine, which helped make many fortunes in the mid 1990s.

Perth-based international consulting, engineering and contacting company, VDM Group, has its sights on further acquisition-based expansion and expected listing on the Australian Stock Exchange in the middle of next month.

The share price of mining junior Batavia Mining Ltd has more than doubled in the first few days of 2006 on a 140 per cent gold resource upgrade that could bring its Gullewa copper gold project in Western Australia back in production within a year.

Two strategic acquisitions during the year will play the major role in Consolidated Minerals Ltd’s growth over the next two to three years – the takeover of Reliance Mining Ltd and an initial 20 per cent stake in Jabiru Metals Ltd, expected to significant

Renowned corporate head kicker and Consolidated Minerals boss Michael Kiernan has positioned ConsMins for some healthy profits over the next few years, but it has been at a cost. Mark Mentiplay reports.

That the runaway Chinese economy is the reason for all that is right with Western Australia’s booming mining sector is becoming a bit of a cliché.

New $8 million float Valhalla Uranium Ltd is the latest to seize the glamorous, almost golden, uranium baton and head off into the blue sky.

Margaret River wine pioneer Dr John Lagan has seen his Xanadu Wines collapse and its major assets sold to eastern states interests. In the process shareholders, his family included, have lost millions of dollars. Mark Mentiplay reports

As the gutted shell of Xanadu Wines, the renamed Global Wine Ventures, considers its options, the Rathbone family is moving quickly to re-establish founder Dr John Lagan’s vision of Xanadu as a premium Margaret River wine and tourism icon.

Western Australian gold miner NuStar Mining plans to merge with Canadian Intrepid Minerals to produce 160,000 ounces of gold a year from 2007.

Chevron has sold nearly all its share of gas from the first phase of the $11 billion Gorgon gas project off WA's north west coast, worth about $30 billion over 25 years from 2010.

Chasing record copper prices, Western Australian nickel/copper producer Fox Resources has launched a bold, fast-track plan to switch its Radio Hill plant near Karratha in the Pilbara to handle about $50 million of high-grade copper ore it has uncovered ne

The race is on between two Western Australian companies to become the first of the world’s new primary vanadium producers to go into production in 2007.

If pedigree counts for anything in the resources sector, De Grey Mining should be a runaway success.

The changing face of the international iron ore game is probably best exemplified by the current rapid development of Australia’s second largest iron ore region in Western Australia’s Mid-West region.

The unprecedented China-fed demand for iron ore has set the stage for a new golden age of development in Western Australia. The rush for the big Pilbara producers to catch up with demand has been coupled with the emergence of the state’s second iron ore r

The first students will graduate this year as part of Murdoch University’s bold plan to create a computer science-games centre of excellence as a precursor to establishing a world-class cyber industry in Perth.

Western Australia’s iron ore export industry started in the mid 1960s with the first major shipments to Japan, expanded to South Korea and Taiwan in the early 1980s and, in more recent years, China.

Australia's two biggest iron ore miners, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, have either just spent or have in the pipeline more than $10 billion worth of short-term Pilbara expansion plans to cash in on the booming China-fed steel market.

Analysts and the gold industry continued to talk up the gold price this week as the precious metal broke the psychological $US500 an ounce barrier, its highest point in nearly 20 years.

The world is just five years away from reaching the point at which oil cannot be extracted fast enough to meet demand.

With a prestigious international award under its belt, sales booming, new products on the way and virtually no debt, rising costs are forcing cashed up Perth company Advanced Nanotechnology to consider shifting at least part of its operations overseas.

Perth-based Vulcan Resources is expected to begin production from its $134 million Kylylahti multi-metal project in eastern Finland in early 2008.

Western Australia’s mining industry needs a dramatic culture shift, employing more sophisticated leadership and empowerment-based psychological methods, if it is to keep pace with other states in achieving zero incidents on mine sites.

Representatives of BHP Billiton and Fortescue Metals Group clashed at an iron ore conference in Perth today over the vexed question of access to the Pilbara iron ore rail network.

Technology with worldwide transport implications has added a new, potentially multi-billion dollar dimension to the manganese market and further underpins WA’s biggest manganese producer’s increasingly buoyant view of the commodity.

Perth satellite communications specialist Fastwave Communications has developed a revolutionary global solution for the near real-time control, monitoring and tracking of remote fixed or mobile assets on land or under the sea, anywhere on the planet.