The Nursery Map (Copy)

6mills

ASX mid-tier mills within 60 km

Six mills owned by ASX mid-tiers sit within 60 km of a Gold Fields or Northern Star plant, measured in a straight line. The closest is Black Cat's Lakewood mill, about 5 km from KCGM.

149koz / qtr

The home-grown answer is already forming

Genesis and Vault produced 72.1 koz and 76.8 koz in the September quarter. Their merger, targeted for November 2026, combines Gwalia, Laverton and King of the Hills inside the Gold Fields–Northern Star footprint.

41km

Bellevue to Agnew

Bairstow names Agnew as the one obvious synergy: shut it and truck the ore to Thunderbox. Bellevue's mill is 41 km away, so any change at Agnew also reshapes Bellevue's neighbourhood.

Where the mills are

Badges show who owns each mill: Northern Star and Gold Fields in black, ASX mid-tiers in rust, and mills that are already foreign-owned in grey. Dashed rings mark 60 km around each Gold Fields and Northern Star mill. Tap or hover over a badge for details.

Eastern Goldfields, Western Australia. Murchison and Pilbara producers are further than 120 km from any combined mill and are listed in the table below.

Next door

Already foreign-owned

Paddington

Zijin Mining

Sunrise Dam

AngloGold Ashanti

Northern Star Gold Fields ASX mid-tier ≤60 km 61–120 km Already foreign-owned

ASX mid-tiers, ranked by proximity

Each company is ranked by its closest mill to a Gold Fields or Northern Star plant. Production figures come from each company's September 2026 quarterly report unless noted.

Company	Mills → nearest GFI/NST mill	Sep qtr koz	Proximity	Context

What the map supports

The panel's synergy scepticism holds up spatially. Only two pairs of combined mills are close: KCGM and Kanowna Belle (19 km), and Agnew and Thunderbox (52 km). Every other combined mill is 65 km or more from its nearest partner, and Granny Smith, Jundee and Gruyere are about 150 km or more away. Beyond the Agnew–Thunderbox pairing, Bairstow's "moving ore around" synergies would mean long hauls.

The tightest clusters are independent mills sitting inside that footprint. Leonora–Laverton (Genesis and Vault) and Kambalda–Norseman (Vault's Randalls, Westgold's Higginsville, Pantoro) are where a bigger owner next door changes the value of a mill.

What it doesn't say

Proximity is not a takeover thesis. Mill capacity, ore type, grade, metallurgy, balance sheets and registers decide deals; a 40 km line on a map is only where the conversation starts.

Murchison and Pilbara producers (Westgold's Murchison hubs, Ramelius, Capricorn, Catalyst, Greatland) are over 160 km from any combined mill. Being a consolidation target there would be about scale, not shared infrastructure.

Method. Mill locations are WA government site points (MINEDEX) retrieved through Canetoad. Edna May uses an ICMM facility point, and Higginsville and Norseman use the nearest registered processing-site points. Distances are straight-line great-circle distances between site points, not haul-road distances. Canetoad's distance tool returned the same figures in spot checks: Laverton–Granny Smith 20.7 km and King of the Hills–Thunderbox 58.0 km. Roads are from Natural Earth (simplified), with the Goldfields Highway south of Kalgoorlie drawn from town points. Ownership is as at 30 October 2026. Gold Fields' proposal for Northern Star was rejected by the NST board on 28 September 2026. This is a market-structure illustration, not investment advice.

Batten, K. "Takeover of Northern Star would be a loss for Australia: Klein", 29 Oct 2026 (IMARC panel).
Motley Fool: Northern Star rejects A$38.7bn Gold Fields offer (28 Sep 2026)
MINING.COM: Regis quits Vault chase (13 Jul 2026)
GMD: Quarterly Report – September 2026 (22 Oct 2026); June 2026 quarterly (28 Jul 2026)
VAU: September 2026 Quarterly Activities Report (22 Oct 2026)
WGX: September 2026 Quarterly Report (21 Oct 2026)
RRL: Quarterly Report to 30 September 2026 (20 Oct 2026)
RMS: Quarterly Results September 2026 (26 Oct 2026)
CMM: KGP Q1 production 31koz, KEP completed (5 Oct 2026)
PNR, BGL, GGP, CYL, BC8: September 2026 quarterlies (20–30 Oct 2026)
OBM: June 2026 Quarterly Activities Report (16 Jul 2026)
FRS: June 2026 Quarterly Activities Report (28 Jul 2026)
NST: Production Update (2 Jul 2026), covering the KCGM mill expansion
Black Cat: Kal East update (13 Apr 2026), ore milled at Lakewood
Norton Gold Fields (Zijin Mining), Paddington; AngloGold Ashanti, Sunrise Dam

Canetoad mill map