Mr McIlwain on Tuesday announced Unity would withdraw its application to process with gold with cyanide at the mine, which sits at the headwaters of the Eurobodalla’s water supply, and that he would step down from his role at the end of the month.

Speaking to the Bay Post/Moruya Examiner, Mr McIlwain said Unity decided to withdraw its cyanide proposal but proceed with other aspects of the modification as “some benefits were better than none”.

He said Dargues was still viable if Unity could find a suitable secondary processing facility, which had always been the challenge.

“There isn’t one, there’s no commercially available access to one,” Mr McIlwain said.

“We’re going to go back to where we were a year ago and start to dream up a plan.

“The project is still viable, it’s not the right outcome and that’s my personal view, and the view of many others, but unfortunately I’m not going to have a hand in that.”

Mr McIlwain said a lack of support from state members, NSW Government agencies, community groups and councils played a part in the company’s decision to withdraw the cyanide processing proposal.

In particular he said the Environmental Protection Agency’s submission to the state government placed Unity in an “untenable position”.

“I suppose we had a view that this was getting pretty tough a while ago but it would have been inappropriate for us to withdraw prior to the exhibition period,” he said.

“We would have liked to have thought everyone would have at least based their opinion on facts, and certainly it looks like the EPA has been swayed by community opinion.

 “Most of our waking hours were spent trying to move this concept of cyanide processing forward, but that became quite difficult obviously without the support of local members as well.

“I probably came away from the Eurobodalla council meeting (on August 25) understanding of the influence of groups that see no value from the project.”

Mr McIlwain said his decision to resign was in some respects unrelated to the Dargues decision.

“We’ve had some shareholder activism and they want to see greater value created,” he said.

“We tried to accede to that a little bit by returning capital, which we have now following a shareholder meeting on Monday.

“The general drums were beating that they wanted more sooner, and I wasn’t prepared to take an approach that others might think is fair so I’ve stepped aside and others can do what they think is going to be able to add greater value to Unity.”

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