HighGrade is Australasia’s weekly online mining magazine delivering to readers the high-grade cut of mining industry news from around the region, and the globe. read more
THE impending listing of Barrick Gold’s African assets on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) will continue to shine a light on London’s emerging gold sector, but the new kid on the block has the potential to put a couple of noses out of joint, namely its closest LSE peers: Randgold Resources and Petropavlovsk.
Quote of the Week"It behoves us to think 'probablistically' about how high the share price might go and it might start to be considered fairly full value. We do, however, feel somewhat vindicated after the Financial Post(Jan 12/10, when Red Back was trading at $C18.12) highlighted our ‘obsession’ with Red Back, which they described as ‘almost comical’. We’ll save our ideas for our clients, not reporters.” - analysts at Paradigm Capital
MANGANESE has joined its big brother iron ore as the spot to be on the radar of investors with boom stock Aurora undertaking an equity raising this week and a host of other juniors expected to put their hands up in the near future with various initiatives aimed at boosting their credentials and attracting market attention.
LAST time HighGrade caught up with Catalpa Resources chief Bruce McFadzean was on a post Diggers & Dealers 09 visit to the company’s Edna May gold project in Western Australia. He spoke of being focused on keeping the balls he was juggling in the air: new gold mine, merger, and potential acquisitions. Six months later we’re in the Catalpa boardroom. McFadzean is showing no signs of fatigue despite just returning from a hectic two-week investor roadshow to Europe and the US.
BACK-from-the-dead zinc miner (and there are a few of those around!) Perilya is showcasing its wares to the Australian market this week, with speculation being it could be an interested acquirer of additional zinc assets.
DEBT may be returning, slowly, as a financing option for mining companies but no-one ever said getting it would be easy. Citadel Resources, for one, is still working on its plans to sign up debt provisions for its Jabal Sayid project.
WHO’D have thought just a few short years after the nickel price went into the stratosphere that there’d be a dearth of pure nickel explorers in Australia? But that rather curious situation suits the focused and well credentialed team at Breakaway Resources nicely as they systematically drill test targets in one of the world’s premier nickel locations.
OZ MINERALS has proven itself happy to again step offshore with the joint venture deal it announced this week for ground in Mexico held by ASX junior Azure Minerals. It would also suggest the possibility of a significant M&A deal elsewhere in South America has increased.
IN THE words of Margaret Mead, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has”. This has been the motto of Sabina Shugg, the founder of Women in Mining Western Australia (WIMWA) who was this week named Women in Resources Champion at the inaugural Chamber of Minerals and Energy of Western Australia’s Women in Resources Awards.
THE iron boom is not only back but it never drew breath, if you can believe the figures amassed by the Australian Bureau of Resource Economics.
WHY do mines end up with trucks which are not able to carry their nominated payload? What is the problem with truck capacity? SAE Standard J-1363 is still used by most suppliers of truck bodies to define the capacity. However, with the advent of larger and larger trucks (and loaders) more sophistication is demanded of the truck tray capacity.
THE developer of “the world’s most advanced” mine fuel management system – a description seemingly endorsed by BHP Billiton’s major mining divisions – is ready to hand over control of his growing business to ensure its technology edge and market lead are maintained in future.
THE Australian developer of new software used to calculate life-of-mine trucking requirements in openpit mines is weighing up a suitable commercial release date after a beta version demonstrated its worth at the Savage River iron ore mine in Tasmania.
WORK on new underground mine design software overseen by the head of mining engineering at the Western Australia School of Mines, Professor Erkan Topal, is progressing with the aim of producing a tool comparable to those available to opencut mine engineers. But a key advance still has “a bit way to go”, according to Topal.
IIR Conferences has extended its Operational Excellence Series into the underground hard-rock mining arena with its planned inaugural Underground Operators Summit in Fremantle in June.
WHY is it okay to remarry (several times) after a shocking experience(s) but one bad hedging experience, it seems, is enough to have people swear off it for life?
REX Minerals boss Steven Olsen says it’s probably premature to think of the company as a target for merger and acquisitions, although he expects interest in the company’s South Australian assets to increase considerably once a resource is released to the market later this year.
ATLAS Iron has moved on Aurox Resources with a $A143 million merger deal that secures additional port facilities for the iron ore miner at a significant discount, as well as further consolidating emerging iron ore plays in the Pilbara.
AFTER locking in $A70 million in debt funding last year, Adamus Resources is raising another $A30 million to get it over the development line at its potential 100,000-ounce Southern Ashanti gold project in Ghana.
IF NORTH American markets pay a premium for the better resource projects, does it not make it incumbent upon every Australian-listed company with promising production assets to list in Toronto so as to maximise opportunities of stock price uplift for its shareholder owners?
YOU don’t often hear company managing directors admit the main reason they want to get into production is to fund drilling, but that’s precisely the approach Signature Metals’ Bill Oliver wants to take at his company’s gold project in Ghana.
THINGS will be different from now on. That’s the message Citigold managing director Mark Lynch is trying to get across to investors after the company signed a memorandum of understanding with a Chinese group to develop part of its Charters Towers assets as part of a broader plan to turn the project’s performance around.
MARCH 8: THE Canadian firm that a few years back liked an Australian gold developer’s name so much that it adopted it as its own after buying the company, is back on the prowl, and ASX-listed companies with gold projects in West Africa had better be aware.
IT MIGHT not be causing analysts to realign their spreadsheets at this stage, but ESCO Corporation’s plans to be the dominant player in Australia’s mining machine parts business, in its own right, will cause long-time product licensee Bradken to change a few of its foundry moulds. That’s if history repeats in this case.
AFTER the extended summer break the mining industry feels like it is just getting back into the swing of things. But 2010 is already shaping as another interesting year with key concerns like the Henry tax review and the carbon pollution reduction scheme already grabbing the headlines against a backdrop of renewed market volatility.
THERE’S something big and yellow coming up on Kerry Stokes’ Channel Seven, and it’s not Fat Cat or any other Cat we’ve come to know (lately).
