Stan Bharti goes for gold

Stan Bharti seems to have the Midas touch.

The mining engineer, whose career was launched in Sudbury at Falconbridge Ltd. in 1979, is about to turn Toronto-based William Resources Inc. into a mid-sized gold producer.

William is now "going through the formalities" of taking over Australian gold producer Valdora Minerals, worth $49.9 million. Add this headline-making acquisition to William's interests in Mexico, Brazil, South Africa and Russia and you've got an annual production target of 180,000 ounces of gold by 1998.

That's math, Stan Bharti style.

Bharti's ambitious rise in the mining industry surprises even him at times.

"The evolution of my career has been quite interesting," he says in a phone interview from his Toronto home.

"I didn't have any special calling for mining. I just thought that it was more interesting and challenging than the average engineering discipline."

The India-born maverick is well known for his Sudbury-based business, Bharti Laamanen Mining Inc. (BLM), which he co-founded with Risto Laamanen, his wife's distant cousin.

Bharti left a comfortable position as technical superintendent at Falconbridge in 1988 to start up the mining engineering and consulting firm, which now employs more than 200 people and supplies engineering and contract services to the industry worldwide.

"I was in my mid-30s and I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I thought, 'If I don't do it now, I won't do it.'

"I had advanced quite well at Falconbridge in my career, and I had a pretty high profile, so I...