Quote of the Week“Tom [Albanese] definitely is not a bull on uranium in the near term. [He] believes that uranium will be a subdued market for the next five years and one needs to wait for the secondary material in the market to dry up before a more balanced market unfolds. Also watching Olympic Dam closely. Likes the outlook beyond 2020.” - UBS’s take from a roundtable meeting with Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese
MDL sits down at the table
LAST month’s completion of a feasibility study for the Ojvg gold project in Senegal appears to have been the trigger for neighbouring gold miner Mineral Deposits to take the first step in the rationalisation of the region.
60 seconds with David Price
HIGHGRADE: Three people who have most influenced you in your career/life?
A quality acquisition template
AUSTRALIAN juniors have relatively low quality iron ore assets, according to a well-performed miner currently on the lookout for a project to buy.
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Mawson still busy on the ground
WHILE the major dispute between First Quantum and the Democratic Republic of Congo is clearly an unhelpful development for a budding copper miner like Mawson West, the company is continuing work on the ground and is hopeful of listing in Toronto next year.
Asia growth path for billion-dollar Kingsgate
STANDOUT Australian-listed gold miner Kingsgate Consolidated is set for an interesting, growth fuelled future with the planned Thailand-listing expected to be the catalyst for potential operational and M&A activity.
Oceans apart
NEW Zealand gold producer OceanaGold has been a standout gold equity investment favourite over the past 12 months or so, and with strong news flow in the pipeline, the ingredients for the outperformance remain.
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Finders hopes Wetar is for keeps
AFTER a 16-month trial mining phase at the Wetar project in Indonesia, Finders Resources is confident that it has mastered the copper project’s metallurgy and an expansion to 7000 tonnes of copper cathode production, and then 23,000t, will be both feasible and economically robust.
Discovery copper ‘rare and robust’
DISCOVERY Metals has delivered the goods with a feasibility study into the development of its promising and robust Bosweto copper project in Botswana.
Dominion gold-plated again
THE shocking year that was fiscal 2010 is hopefully done and dusted for Dominion Mining, and for those corporates that liked the look of an Australian gold miner going cheap in a rising price environment, the moment for a bargain seems passed.
Risky talk at Africa conference
EVENTS in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa have heightened the sovereign risk profile of both countries. At what has become the biggest African mining conference outside of Africa this week, both topics were front of mind.
On the move: Gindalbie, Condor Nickel, Carrick Gold, Caledon, Southern Cross Goldfields
GINDALBIE Metals has formally announced it plans to hunt for further opportunities beyond its developing Karara iron ore project and to that end has appointed iron ore executive Stephen Abbott as its new general manager business development.
Value in Australian ‘iron’
ANDREW Forrest spoke a lot at the recent Diggers & Dealers conference in Kalgoorlie about Fortescue Metals Group’s use of innovative mining methods in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, but doesn’t believe Australia’s mining supply sector is innovative enough to build a significant manufacturing base. Industrea’s Robin Levison is one who disagrees.
Mining uncertainty saps Runge momentum
RUNGE chief Tony Kinnane remains confident the company can turn around its 2009-10 profit and revenue nosedive, with offshore markets and potentially its SAP partnership putting software sales back on an upward growth curve.
acQuire founder wins Ernst & Young award
BILL Withers wrote the business plan for acQuire in August 1996 on a plane from Brisbane to Perth. Named this month as Ernest & Young’s 2010 Western Region Entrepreneur of the Year, Withers’ journey to the present has certainly been bumpier than that transcontinental trip across Australia. But acQuire is well and truly on the world map as a mining software supplier.
Datamine integration ‘progressing well’
THE QUIET transition continues for Datamine under the stewardship of Canadian simulation technology leader CAE, with the latter giving little away to analysts about its plans for the mining software firm acquired earlier this year at a recent briefing.
IT diary 2010-11
AUTHOR of the Ventsim mine ventilation simulation software now used at more than 400 mines worldwide, Craig Stewart, will host new training courses in Brisbane and Sydney in November.
Sedgman moves deeper into Africa
AUSTRALIAN engineering firm Sedgman’s push into Africa has gained further momentum with confirmation that is has secured more than $US90 million of work on Discovery Metals’ Boseto copper project in north-east Botswana. The company lists southern Africa as the second richest potential source of new projects in a $US6 billion-plus global pipeline.
Coal safety group heads to Beijing
AUSTRALIAN technology and safety training expertise is getting an airing at the 5th China International Forum on Work Safety in Beijing.
ReGENERATION
Price not right for the life aquatic
A DECISION to change tack at university, from marine biology to geology, has propelled Artemis Resources’ new general manager David Price several times around the world from the forests of Papua New Guinea to the Austrian alps, and now into the top job at a gold explorer sitting on some decent real estate.
EXPLORATION
Birth of the PNG exploration co
THE team behind the outstanding successes of companies like Abelle, Medusa Mining, and emerging miner Kingsrose Mining were among a plane load of resource sector heavyweights that last month visited a new Papua New Guinea exploration venture. They liked what they saw, and the little known Pacific Niugini now has $A6 million being added to its treasury via a placement run out of London.
UNDERGROUND
More life in the Big Bell?
GOLD explorer Aragon Resources’ Central Murchison gold project is beginning to deliver results that live up to its history and mining studies suggest the problems that dogged the Big Bell mine in its previous life could be addressed with a different mining method.
MINING
A numbers game for Atlas
WITH costs running two-thirds higher than those of its bigger rivals in the Pilbara cost control for Atlas Iron is all a matter of moving a lot of tonnes, according to managing director David Flanagan.
MINING INTELLIGENCE
People impact underestimated, and under-measured
THE HIGH level performance of any piece of equipment or structure requires human factors engineering. It must be designed and manufactured/fabricated to a high standard and secondly have the people controlling it or operating it performing at a high level. Many engineers constrain themselves to the first part of the optimisation equation.
EXPLORATION
First he takes Manhattan ... but not yet Cloncurry
THE Cloncurry district is about to get hit with everything bar the kitchen sink as exploration Ivanhoe Mines-style really comes to town. But it’s not going to feel the wrath of Zeus for a while yet.
EXPLORATION
UEQ still hopeful on Nabarlek partner
URANIUM Equities managing director Bryn Jones remains hopeful the company can still woo potential joint venture partner Japanese company Mitsui into its Nabarlek project despite a hitch in initial plans for the Japanese company to get involved through a $A15 million buy-in.
AUSTMINE
Room to grow
AUSTRALIA’S major mineral fields afford The MAC Services Group and its ‘build-it-and-they-will-come’ business model plenty of room for growth, according to MAC boss Mark Maloney, who says the company is unlikely to look offshore for 3-4 years and is not perturbed yet by Rio Tinto’s remote mining direction.
EVENTS
Potential pitfalls for SMEs in shifting ground
IF COCHLEAR is the pin-up child for Australian mining technology SMEs looking to take on the world then perhaps it’s time to dust off that old CSIRO photo too. For in a transformational period for mining technology it is the IP landscape that might move most rapidly underfoot, says a keynote speaker at this month’s 2010 Mining Technology Conference.
MINING IT
Market dimensions expanding for new software
ONE of the developers of a new industrial visualisation software package that applies 3D game technology to real-time data sources such as process control and SCADA systems says potential new applications keep opening up for what is clearly a nascent communications, simulation and planning tool in industries such as mining.
