Royalties roll in for Carnegie
Sometimes being a mining explorer in a past life can come in handy for a technology company.
Take the case of wave power developer Carnegie Wave Energy, which in a previous incarnation was called Carnegie Minerals, a spin-off from 1990s explorer Hardman Resources.
Since making the switch to renewable energy, Carnegie has raised $100 million to develop the technology and build a world-first project at Garden Island.
Income so far has come from capital raisings and government grants. But in the past year the company has also begun to earn gold royalty payments from mining tenements it owns.
The payments to date of about $1.6 million have come from gold miner Metals X from production at the Higginsville operations in the Goldfields.
Metals X took over the site last year as part of a $40 million deal with Alacer Gold.
Carnegie managing director Micheal Ottaviano said the tenements were the only assets left over from the firm's exploration days.
"One of the things I carried around with me ever since I joined was this manila folder with Higginsville royalty written across the front of it waiting for it to go into production," Mr Ottaviano said.
The company warned future royalty payments remained uncertain depending on variables such as production output and the viability of mining activities.
"Hopefully we'll continue to receive cheques for some time yet," Mr Ottaviano said. "There's probably a few other clean tech companies that would like to have an annuity stream gold royalty coming in.
The wave energy project is due to begin generating income from energy sold to the HMAS Stirling naval base after commissioning later this year.
