Perenti’s Barminco takes over Bellevue Gold contract from Bill Beament’s Develop Global with $850m win

Bill Beament’s Develop Global has been cast aside for Perenti subsidiary Barminco, which scooped up a $850 million job in the Goldfields. Perenti told investors on Wednesday that Barminco had won a four-year underground mining services contract at Bellevue Gold’s namesake mine north of Leinster. It comes with a one-year extension option after work starts on site on August 1. Barminco will provide all underground mining services to support ongoing development and production activities, in what it called “a new operating relationship” with Bellevue. The contract will require $75m of growth capital next financial year. Outgoing Perenti chief executive Mark Norwell said the contract win reinforced Barminco as a global leader in underground mining and would strengthen its earnings in Australia. Shares in Perenti end the day up 8.4 per cent at $2.20. Develop Global, which was founded by industry heavyweight Bill Beament, confirmed it would finish up at Bellevue on July 31 but said there was enough work across its portfolio to redeploy staff from the gold site. On Wednesday, Develop also announced the award of a $274m three-year contract to restart underground mining at Core Lithium’s Finniss lithium project in the Northern Territory. The Finniss job starts in July, has a minimum three-year term with a two-year extension option, and is expected to generate steady-state revenue of $120m a year. “Our new contract with Core Lithium is ideally suited to our key strengths and will see us relocate highly-experienced people from our Bellevue site to the Finniss project,” Mr Beament said. “We are operating in a very favourable contracting market and therefore it is important that we strike the right balance between delivering value for our clients and returns for our shareholders,” he said of the Bellevue loss. Develop’s stock was down in early trade, before recovering to finish up 0.5 per cent at $6.21. It hit a record of $6.25 last month. Operational issues plagued Bellevue for much of 2024 and 2025, with several explosive charge misfires and lower-than-expected grades among the issues. But last month Bellevue reported a growing cash pile and gold on hand for the March quarter from about $16m to $181m after generating record underlying free cash flow from the mine of $158m. Bellevue’s pioneering move to run its mine off green energy has also boosted its attractiveness to investors amid the global oil and gas crunch. “Bellevue’s power station continues to operate with industry-leading renewable energy rates of approximately 90 per cent during March 2026,” the company said last month. “Bellevue’s direct exposure to diesel costs continues to be one of the lowest in the sector. “Diesel purchases represented approximately 1.3 per cent of total project costs during the financial year to 28 February 2026. Bellevue is not currently impacted by any diesel supply issues.”