Perth-based Alkane Resources, which produces gold and antimony from mines in NSW, Victoria and Sweden, announced the landmark news in July as it presented its 2025/26 production results.
Asked if it was a ploy to help shareholders get ahead of coming tax changes, which will scrap the 50 per cent discount from July 2027, Alkane's boss said it was a happy coincidence.
That circumstance was underpinned by an unexpected spike in the gold price to an all-time high of $US5,589.38 on January 28.
"When the gold price ran so hard, we exceeded our budgetary expectations in two things - we accelerated some of the capital growth projects that we had, and we also cemented our ideal of paying a dividend," Nick Earner said.
"We've started with a smallish level, because you want a dividend to be sustainable."
The mid-tier miner intends to pay an inaugural dividend of two cents per share, fully franked, after it releases its full-year results later in August.
The gold price has since fallen to about $US4,000 as of Tuesday, prompting mixed feelings for Alkane and the broader goldmining sector.
"It's super easy to feel a little bit flat about that because everyone loves these periods of very hot prices," Mr Earner told reporters at the Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum in Western Australia.
"But we're still at remarkably high gold prices - we're hovering around this $A6,000 ($US4,000) an ounce, which is well above our all-in costs.
"But once you clear that point, every thousand dollars the gold price is up, we're making another $150 million in the year."
"It's just phenomenal."
The still-high gold price - it's about 20 per cent up since the 2025 forum - is helping to motivate gold companies into the production phase.
"So absolutely, it's driven by price, and absolutely it's putting a pressure on people who can do project delivery," Mr Earner said on Tuesday.
Earlier in the day, the forum heard domestic gold miners are competing for workers as activity soars in the sector, particularly in the resource-rich WA.
"I've never seen anything like it," the boss of leading gold producer Ramelius Resources told journalists, after addressing thousands of forum delegates in the gold mining capital of Kalgoorlie.
"Normally, in one year, you probably get to see two to three gold plants get built," Mark Zeptner said.
"I reckon you can get up to about 10 (in 2026), and there's no way they are all going to get built this year.
"It's unprecedented."
The WA-based company's wages bill runs to about five to seven per cent of its costs each year, some of which feeds into its overall 10-15 per cent engineering capital expenditure.
"In the engineering space, they (workers) are very sought after" across the industry, Mr Zeptner said.
The firm, a top-100 listed company trading on the Australian stock exchange, has about 1000 workers including 700 contractors.
Ramelius recently released a new four-year plan underpinning its ambition to more than double production of the yellow metal to around 500,000 ounces a year by 2030.
Some market watchers such as US investment bank JPMorgan are still tipping another rally in the coming months, with a potential push toward $US5,000 or more on the cards.
Mr Earner said it was hard to know where gold will end up this year, given the factors that led to its record high this year.
Those included the relentless demand for the yellow metal by China's central bank.
"There's no way in the world we would have thought that," he said.
9°C