Gold-rush boost for canny tycoon Dobson

HARRY Dobson, the Borders-based mining tycoon who has built one of Scotland's biggest personal fortunes through a string of canny investments, has struck gold again.

Shares in Kirkland Lake Gold, the Canadian-based miner for which Dobson and a partner paid just 2 million upfront a decade ago, rose to an all-time high last week on the back of record production, profits and gold grades.

The market value of the company now tops 750m, a seven-fold increase on the price it was trading at just over two years ago. Chairman Dobson owns about 6 per cent of the company - which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (Aim) and in Canada - a stake worth some 45m.

Although shares raced ahead on last week's news, several analysts have a "strong buy" rating on the company, which is looking to more than double production. Dobson, 63, had teamed up with his long-term business partner Brian Hinchcliffe to buy the five Kirkland Lake mines in Canada - some of which had first yielded gold more than 80 years earlier - from Kinross Gold in 2001.

The company has worked to bring them back into production and is completing an expansion to increase output from the 81,860 ounces hit in the latest financial year.

"We remain on track to achieve our projected 180,000 to 200,000 ounces of annual gold production by the end of the 2012 fiscal year and continue to look for and evaluate further expansion opportunities," said Dobson.

After leaving school, Dobson, a farmer's son from Lauder, went on a posting to the Solomon Islands with Voluntary Service Overseas where he first became interested in mining. He began his mining career in Australia before moving to Canada where he worked for a broking company involved in raising money for mining projects. Through investing in a series of his own mining ventures he built up a fortune estimated at more than 200m and went on to invest in property and race horses. He hit the headlines in 2005 when he made a 30m profit on a 6.5 per cent stake bought two-and-a-half years earlier in Manchester United, which he later sold to the Glazer family.

Dobson is also chairman of Aim-listed companies Rambler Metals & Mining and Borders & Southern Petroleum - a UK company looking for oil near the Falkland Islands.