Finders Resources has acquired majority holdings in the Wetar copper and Ojolali gold-silver projects in Indonesia , and re-structured and listed Geopacific Resources on the Australian Stock Exchange, with Finders as the largest shareholder, and successfully listed Finders on the AIM market of the London stock exchange.

Finders Resources chairman Dr Russell Fountain says the company completed a successful scoping study for Wetar copper and is well advanced with a feasibility study for production of copper at 25,000 tonnes per year.

"For the future, our focus is to complete the Wetar feasibility study by the third quarter of next year, and are looking to fast track development of a gold mining operation at Ojolali, based initially on the Jambi oxide gold resource supported by our new discovery at Batu Kuning," Dr Russell Fountain says.

"This will provide early cash flow and funding for organic growth of the Ojolali project which has truly exciting additional exploration potential."

The development concept for Wetar is to ship concentrate to an offshore hydrometalurgical plant to produce LME grade copper. Stage 1 of the feasibility study underway is process test work and design. Stage 2 will be bankable studies. Higher grades have been found in recent drilling, due to better core recovery. Also, high copper and zinc recoveries have been achieved from process test work.

Process testing should be complete by the first quarter of 2007, followed by completion of the feasibility study in the fourth quarter. Capital investment is estimated to be Aus$105 million to achieve commercial production in the first quarter 2009 at 1.5 million tonnes per year of ore, yielding 25,000 tonnes of LME grade copper. Ojolali could be in production the year before, initially targeting 50,000 ounces per year gold.

The Wetar project is located on the north coast of the largely uninhabited Wetar Island, in Indonesia 's Mollucas Province . Access is via boat from neighbouring islands, either Alor or West Timor , both of which have direct air connections to the major city of Kupang .

The Ojolali project is approximately 6km from the town of Bara Datu , in the Kabupaten of Way Kanan. Bara Datu is serviced by the Sumatra power grid and is a four-hour drive along the Trans Sumatra Highway from the nearest airport at Banda Lampung. www.findersresources.com

News sourced from International Mining Project News - www.im-mining.com