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JUST like that. One minute blue skies, excellent visibility and a heavenly view all around, the next gloom - like a train passing into a tunnel. For many junior miners and explorers, the train metaphor is apt. It’s dark in the tunnel, yes, yet they can still feel forward momentum. But is the small light up ahead the end of the tunnel or a freight train coming the other way?
Quote of the Week"Credit crunch ... I'd be able to take it more seriously if it didn't sound like a breakfast cereal." - a British comedian who probably borrowed it from someone else.
DESPITE potential targets having market capitalisations fractions of what they recently were, acquisitions now seem off the agenda for OZ Minerals judging by a recent speech given by company CEO Andrew Michelmore to the Australian-British Chamber of Commerce.
IN contrast to many of her peers, Ines Scotland believes she’s in the right place at the right time. “It’s a fantastic time to be constructing a project, as long as you can finance it,” she told HighGrade this week. The place is Saudi Arabia.
TALK about emerging from a time machine at the wrong time and place. Rox Resources managing director Ian Mulholland could be the next Dr Who.
JOURNALISTS are often accused of not living in the real world, and the call by one well-known practitioner for company directors of junior exploration companies to more or less fall on their swords in the interest of preserving shareholder funds, does indeed do the accusation justice.
IF THERE is a modicum of ambition left in the languishing Australian gold sector, then successful explorer and would-be developer Integra Mining must surely be now in the crosshairs of a predator.
THE backing of a major shareholder has given AIM-listed junior Gemfields the confidence and cash to make a play for fellow London stock and coloured gemstone company, TanzaniteOne. The ‘proposed offer’ was a predictable move by Gemfields, a self-described “consolidator” within the coloured gemstones sector, and the response from an indignant T1 was equally foreseeable.
OPPORTUNITY not Armageddon is the cry (presumably plaintively) from Merrill Lynch, which, while being one of the many investment banks completely blindsided to the dangers that are now reaping carnage, is maintaining its faith.
YOUR news: a 35% increase in the metal inventory and $US33 million boost in the net present value of your flagship project. Your reward: a 5c, or 16%, fall in your share price. That, says Discovery Metals CEO Brad Sampson, was a good result.
AN expensive interim financing facility was the only way to keep the $A1.1 billion Spinifex Ridge molybdenum project on track for production in early 2010 after the project got bogged in Western Australia’s heavily criticised mine approvals maze earlier this year.
THE plunge in the value of the Aussie dollar against the American greenback has again produced a surge in the $A gold price – this time to record levels – and revealed some good-value nuggets. One is Silver Lake Resources, according to Keith Goode.
HIGH-TECH 'listening' devices developed by Australia's CSIRO to enhance coal plant maintenance and yield could also be used as non-invasive measuring tools to fine tune the performance of other mineral processing plants.
I THINK everyone is interested in automation. It offers not only potential labour savings, but also major efficiency/productivity gains, maintenance cost savings, and flow on capital investment savings.
UNFAZED by dismissive analysts, CBH Resources managing director Stephen Dennis remains confident that the battle to make Broken Hill a one owner mining town will ultimately prove successful.
‘SURVIVAL of the fittest’ is a cliché that’s rapidly gaining currency in the junior resources sector. Emmerson Resources CEO Rob Bills prefers “fortune favours the brave”, and he claims to have won new friends on an eastern states roadshow this week.
AS THE ever-worsening economic crisis sweeping the globe has continued to unfold, one recurring thought has continued to strike Mediterranean’s Ghost – thank God our Australian banks have always been such a pack of absolute bastards.
JUSTIN Brown heads the sort of junior exploration company that on the face of it is one of many worldwide now under some threat following the credit crunch and the flight from equities. But shareholders of the company he leads, Montezuma Mining, will be reassured that as well as his geological background, Brown has proven business savvy.
THREE people who have most influenced you in your career/life, and why?
TIMING could be better but discoveries wait for no market. And while stockmarkets ebb and flow – though usually not quite to this degree! – the mineralisation that can make a VMS mine is the most important factor for a company such as Australian-listed Silver Swan Group.
EXPLORATION success continues to overshadow production performance by Western Areas, which is aiming to get a 30% productivity boost from higher-payload underground mine trucks so that it can put off spending $A50 million on a new haulage shaft at the rich Flying Fox nickel mine in Western Australia and maybe drive off some competing interest in the adjacent Lounge Lizard deposit.
MINING software market bellwether Gemcom is expecting to maintain strong global growth rates despite a noticeable slowdown in financing for North American juniors and exploration projects due to the US finance sector woes. The deceleration could hit sales in the Canadian-based company’s home market, but it is not expecting the worldwide mining sector to fall in a hole.
THE rapid growth in China’s steel output has surprised and shaken the world steel industry. Eight years ago the country was just another player; today it dominates global production, consumption and trade – and is likely to continue to do so for several years to come. Steel Business Briefing takes this opportunity to stand back and review the emergence, structure, priorities and direction of this industry giant.
EVEN the most persistent voices of reason are not being heard in the current blizzard of bad news from the world’s stockmarkets and financial centres. They don’t get more persistent – some mining executives would say incessant – than Keith Goode, who was madly waving his arms around this week about the (positive) impact of the Australian dollar on local miners’ revenue streams.
