Who Speaks for the Garden When Lingbao Owns the Mine?

When St Barbara agreed on 10 September 2026 to sell its remaining interest in the Simberi gold mine, the buyer was Lingbao Gold Group, a miner listed in Hong Kong. The package pays the Australian company A$453 million in cash and 2 royalties. The larger royalty, at 2.75%, applies to Simberi gold and silver from 1 July 2027. A smaller royalty of 1.5% applies to minerals from the Tabar Islands exploration licences. The sale awaits approval from regulators in the People's Republic of China and Papua New Guinea and from the shareholders of the 2 companies.

Lingbao bought half of the Simberi parent company plus 1 share on 2 April 2026. Kumul Minerals Holdings, the state miner, agreed in December 2025 to pay A$100 million for a direct 20%. Lingbao will own 80% of the New Simberi Gold joint venture once regulators approve the sale. That stake makes Lingbao the second Chinese company to control a Papua New Guinean mine. Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) owns 85% of the Ramu nickel-cobalt mine in Madang Province. Zijin Mining owns an effective 24.5% of the Porgera gold mine through half of its operator, Barrick Niugini.

Andrew Strelein, chief executive of St Barbara, described a government preference for ownership in the asset itself over a stake in the parent company. He gave that account in a July 2026 interview. Kumul's 20% therefore attaches to New Simberi directly. Strelein recalled talk of missed state opportunities to buy into such projects. He named Simberi as a case in point.

On Simberi Island, in the Tabar group of New Ireland Province, the mine produced 49,000 ounces of gold in 2025 from oxide ore mined since 2008. The operator will mine the higher-grade sulphide ore beneath it under the expansion plan agreed in April. St Barbara projects more than 200,000 ounces a year and a mine life to at least 2038. A new ball mill is due from China by October 2026. St Barbara targets first sulphide concentrate for mid-2028.

In Hong Kong, Lingbao's H shares trade on 香港聯合交易所 (the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong). The company files there as 靈寶黃金集團股份有限公司 (Lingbao Gold Group Company Limited). Rule 2.07C(4)(b) of the exchange's listing rules obliges listed issuers to publish their documents in English and in Chinese unless the rules state otherwise. The Chinese text of the rule asks for 中、英文本 (Chinese and English versions). Lingbao's April notice on a share placing earmarked about HK$500.9 million, some 65% of the net proceeds, for the Simberi expansion.

Nickel 28, a minority partner with 8.56% listed on the TSX Venture Exchange in Toronto, announced on 15 April 2026 that the operator had lodged a proposal for development with the Mineral Resources Authority under the Mining Act. Ramu NiCo Management (MCC) Limited operates the mine for the joint venture. Its phase II proposal estimates the cost at about US$1.6 billion. The expansion would roughly double production capacity. Nickel 28 described the project as conditional on mining leases and permits from the Government of Papua New Guinea.

Ramu produced 33,007 tonnes of nickel and 3,099 tonnes of cobalt in 2025. Its nickel output beat the design capacity of 32,600 tonnes. Ships load its mixed hydroxide precipitate at Basamuk on the Madang coast. Sarimu Kanu, managing director of Kumul Minerals Holdings (KMHL), says the state miner took 1.97% of the joint venture in 2026. KMHL plans to lift that stake to 20%. Kanu also says KMHL and MCC plan a Basamuk refinery for 2 products, nickel sulphate for batteries and a lower-purity nickel for stainless steel.

Craig Lennon, head of Asia-Pacific for Nickel 28, credits Ramu's deep-sea tailings disposal with a cost advantage over the filtering and dry-stacking methods of Indonesian producers. Ok Tedi Mining, by contrast, is building a residual tailings dam for 2032 to end riverine disposal into the Fly River. Riverine disposal drew legal and community opposition for decades. A 2014 National Court order suspended it for a time. Kanu says Ok Tedi Mining made the switch a condition of the new 2084 mine life at Ok Tedi.

Under section 3 of the Mining Act 1992, a special mining lease issues only after the Minister convenes a development forum. The Minister invites representatives of 4 parties. The applicant and the landholders of the affected ground speak at the forum alongside the National Government and the provincial government. Section 3 also obliges the Minister to conduct the forum under procedures affording a fair hearing to all participants. John Lewins, chair of K92 Mining, has said that a mining company in Papua New Guinea is always in someone's garden.

The Papua LNG development forum, a petroleum counterpart, opened in Port Moresby in July 2026 to allocate project benefits to landowners and local governments. Clan delegations at such forums most likely share Tok Pisin as their common language. Papua New Guinea counts Tok Pisin as an official language alongside English, Hiri Motu and PNG Sign Language. Tok Pisin calls a landowner a papagraun and a clan a lain. A 2005 landowner's handbook for the YUS area of Morobe Province states Graun, em i laip (the ground is life) in its first Tok Pisin chapter.

Kanu expects the Basamuk hub to draw nickel producers from the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia. Huri translators once prepared a landholder benefit agreement and an environmental and social impact summary in Solomon Islands Pijin for a resource operator consulting customary landholders there. The first summary proved unusable at a village meeting. Its wording kept the vocabulary of the engineers. The translators rewrote it around named commitments and named risks, with a gloss for technical terms and an account of the grievance procedure. Facilitators then tested the new version in 2 comprehension rounds.

Open-pit mining at Porgera, in Enga Province, resumed in December 2023 after 4 years on care and maintenance. The stoppage began with stalled talks over the special mining licence. The mine produced 376,000 ounces of gold in 2025, which doubled its output of the previous year.