Who holds the paper on WA ground? Every caveat and mortgage, mapped

The tenement register records more than who holds a title. Every caveat and every mortgage lodged against a WA mining title names the party holding it: the royalty company protecting its royalty, the bank holding its security, the fund that lent against a project. It is all public, title by title. Nobody had put it together.

So we did. We read every caveat and mortgage still standing on a live WA title, 4,736 caveats on 3,546 titles and 2,899 mortgages on 1,932, and drew the web: who holds the paper, and whose ground it sits over.

The WA Mining Web is live now, free to explore.

The royalty companies sit over more ground than the banks

The biggest single holder of paper on WA ground is not a bank. It is Royal Gold, with caveats over 583 live titles across 42 companies. That includes International Royalty Corporation and Sandstorm Gold, both now part of Royal Gold, whose caveats are still registered in their old names. Westgold alone has 184 titles under Royal Gold caveats.

Behind it come Franco-Nevada on 267 titles, most of them under mortgage rather than caveat, Osisko Gold Royalties on 162 and Vox Royalty on 143, spread across 31 companies.

The default view puts the 14 biggest holders of paper on an outer ring, grouped by what they are: royalty companies, funds, banks, security trustees and traders. Inside are the companies at least two of them hold a caveat or mortgage over, each pulled towards the parties it is tied to. The royalty houses cluster with the Goldfields producers. The banks sit across the bottom with their own, smaller set of borrowers.

Who lends against WA ground

Among the banks, Westpac holds paper over 176 live titles, almost all of it mortgages, including 53 of Genesis Minerals' titles and 39 of Regis Resources'. HSBC is on 148 and Commonwealth Bank on 105.

The less obvious lenders are the interesting ones:

• Ford Motor Company holds mortgages over 30 of Liontown's titles. Ford buys spodumene from Liontown.
• Trafigura, the commodity trader, holds mortgages over 21 Develop Global titles and 9 of Medallion Metals'.
• Hawke's Point holds mortgages over 85 Ora Banda Mining titles.
• Washington H. Soul Pattinson holds mortgages over 40 Aeris Resources titles, and Nebari over 40 of Maritana Minerals'.

Then there are the security trustees. GLAS, a loan agency, holds paper over 177 titles across 16 companies. AET Structured Finance holds mortgages over 85, every one of them Griffin Coal's, all lodged in 2013. A trustee holds security on behalf of a group of lenders who are not named on the register, so the web shows them as trustees rather than as the lenders themselves.

Every company has its own web

Search any company, ticker or subsidiary name, or click any name in the web, and it moves to the centre with everything attached to it: who holds caveats and mortgages over its ground, whose ground it holds them over, and who it holds ground with. Every name around it opens its own web, so you can follow the paper from company to company.

Mineral Resources is a good example of how much one company's web says. MinRes and Albemarle share 34 live titles at Wodgina, and each holds caveats over the other's share of them: Albemarle lodged its caveats in 2019, MinRes in 2023. That is what a joint venture looks like on the register, with each partner protecting its interest in the other's half.

Westgold is the most encumbered company on the register: 360 of its 562 live titles carry a caveat or mortgage held by someone else. Royal Gold is on 184 of them and Kali Metals on 163, through consent caveats lodged in 2024.

The side panel lists every connection, with the caveat types and the years they were lodged. With a free account, Which titles lists the tenements behind any connection, each linked to its tenement page.

Who holds ground together

The second view is joint holdings: 2,395 live titles are held by two or more separate holders. Subsidiaries are rolled up to their listed parent first, so a company moving ground between its own entities is not counted as a joint venture. What is left is the real thing. BHP, Itochu and Mitsui share 496 titles in the Pilbara iron ore joint ventures. Rio Tinto's Robe River partners share 171.

Reading it properly

A few things worth knowing before you draw conclusions from a line on the web:

• A caveat is not a royalty. A consent caveat protects some interest in a title: a royalty, a deferred payment, an option, an earn-in or a loan. The register records the caveat, not the deal behind it. Where the caveator is a royalty company it is usually a royalty, but the web only ever says holds a caveat over.
• Only paper still on the title counts. Withdrawn, discharged, lapsed and rejected caveats and mortgages are left out, and a mortgage paid out in several part discharges counts as gone. A few from the 1990s were never formally discharged and still sit on their titles. They count, because the register still records them, and every connection shows the years it was lodged.
• Companies are grouped under their listed parent, using the same ASX filings behind the map's colour by owner. Royalty companies, banks and funds listed overseas are grouped where several registered names are plainly one company.
• It is not just companies. Native title groups hold caveats over more than 40 live titles, and prospectors and other private individuals hold about 200 of the caveats and mortgages. One prospector alone holds caveats over 39 titles. Private individuals are named in the web as the register names them, and counted rather than named on the company pages.

Why it matters

If you are buying ground, a consent caveat means someone else's consent is needed to transfer it, and the web tells you whose. If you are following a company, it shows who has lent against its ground and who holds royalties or other interests over it. And if you manage titles, it is a quick way to see every instrument sitting over a portfolio in one place.

Each company's explorer page now carries the same picture in short: who holds paper over its ground and who it holds ground with, linked through to the web.

Open the WA Mining Web, search for a company you know, and follow the paper.