OceanaGold prepares fast-track application for Macraes expansion, lists on NYSE
OceanaGold will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange in the early hours of Wednesday morning, a landmark occasion for the Canadian-headquartered company that has its roots in New Zealand gold.
The company is already listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX); “interlisting” on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is common among the TSX’s large goldminers.
CEO Gerard Bond told the Herald that Oceana aims to gain better access to US-based investors and capital and increase liquidity in its shares, both of which can improve a company’s valuation.
“The US is the largest, deepest capital market in the world ... and some US funds limit investments to US-listed companies,” Bond noted.
Nearly half of the company’s gold production now comes from its Haile Gold Mine in the US, but Oceana also owns New Zealand’s only two large-scale gold mines, which also produce silver: the Macraes Mine in Otago, the country’s largest, and the Waihī mine at the base of the Coromandel Peninsula.
Bond also confirmed that Oceana will, within several months, push ahead with its Phase Four expansion project to extend the mine life at Macraes by a decade, to roughly 2040.
Key permits and consents for Macraes currently expire in 2030 and 2031.
The project is deemed economically important with significant national benefits. On that basis, it is listed in fast-track legislation and is eligible to bypass standard consenting processes through a one-window government regulatory process for permitting and consenting.
Oceana will submit a formal fast-track application by the end of September.*
The Macraes expansion does not involve a new pit or underground operation, rather it would be a more incremental extension of the current operation, Bond said.
The company’s application for the listing in fast-track legislation calls the project “a series of mainly ‘brownfields’ open pit and underground mine expansions, together with increased tailings and waste rock storage capacity ... ”
In December, Oceana’s Waihī North expansion for the Coromandel-area mine was approved, with conditions, in a landmark decision under the fast-track system – it was the first mining project consented under the new process.
From the substantive application submission on April 10, 2025 to a decision on December 18, the decision took a little over eight months.
Bond said the fast-track process was “perfectly suited” to the consideration of large, complex mining projects such as Waihī North and the Macraes expansion.
Waihī North
Oceana is quickly accelerating its Waihī North work to extend the mine’s operations by a decade, to 2040.
The project will add a new underground mine at Wharekirauponga and a new open pit at Gladstone Hill.
Total capital investment at Waihī is expected to be US$215 million ($377m) this year, which will include US$25m in exploration drilling at Wharekirauponga, focused on converting Mineral Resources to Mineral Reserves.
Like many gold miners, Oceana enjoyed record profits in 2025; net profit in the year was US$645.7m, more than triple the US$192m from the previous year.
The gold price soared through the year, and took the company’s average realised gold price from US$2858 per ounce in the first quarter to a whopping US$4227 per ounce in the fourth quarter.
The gold price is now trading above US$4600 an ounce, off its peak of $5600 in January, but nevertheless extraordinarily strong in historical terms.
Joining Bond for the NYSE bell-ringing are roughly a dozen others representing the company, including chairman Paul Benson, investor relations and public relations staff and contractors and four operations staffers, one from each of the firm’s mine sites.
Quenton Johnston, Macraes plant manager, and Cassie McArthur, a senior environmental advisor whose specialty is surveying the local and rare population of native Archey’s Frogs at and around Waihī, are both in New York for the occasion.
Among Oceana’s mitigation plans for conserving biodiversity at Waihī is the establishment of a predator-free area and provision for pest management in order to offset the risks that mine-related operations present to native species, especially the Archey’s frog population, defined by the Department of Conservation as “at risk – declining”.
OceanaGold’s NZ history
The Macraes Mine is bound up with the genesis of Oceana. The Macraes Mining Company (MMCL) bought the ownership permits related to the Macraes operation in 1989 and the mine began operating in 1990.
Thereafter, MMCL merged with Macraes Mining Company Holdings. The company went through several name changes and fixed on OceanaGold in 2004.
Oceana delisted from the ASX in 2022, citing small trading volumes and low trading frequency.
*In an interview, OceanaGold CEO Gerard Bond told the Herald that the company would submit a formal application to fast-track the Macraes Phase Four expansion project by the end of June. After publication, the company supplied a correction: the application will be made by the end of September. The story has been updated to reflect this timeline.
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