News

April 30, 2009

Ormonde Mining’s Tungsten Project Is Shaping Up Nicely For Scheduled First Production In 2011

By Alastair Ford

A quick visit to Ormonde Mining’s website leaves no doubt as to what the principal business of the company is these days. A section right at the top of the home page labeled “About Tungsten” offers a drop down menu containing information on tungsten mineralization, the uses of tungsten, information on pricing, the structure of the industry, and plenty more besides. Another drop down menu also reveals the interesting information that the company’s name, literally a transliteration of the gaelic for “East Munster”, ultimately derives from a pagan goddess named Muma. Quite what Muma was the goddess of, a limited amount of research from Minesite was unable to ascertain, but it would be nice to imagine that like Aphrodite’s association with copper, Muma has a relationship with tungsten. That’s perhaps a bit of a stretch, though, since tungsten wasn’t isolated fully from its any of its ores until late in the 18th century. So perhaps instead we might conjecture that Muma is the pagan patron saint of rebirth and reinvention, like Aphrodite’s compatriot Persephone, and thereby invoke the spirit of Ormonde’s recent past as it’s moved from a developer of Spanish copper-gold assets into a near-term tungsten producer.

The latest news from Ormonde relates to the metallurgy on the company’s flagship asset, the Barruecopardo project in Spain. Work on Barruecopardo has been continuing apace this year, to the extent that according to Kerr Anderson, Ormonde’s managing director, it could be up and running by early 2011. That’s less than two years away, a schedule that reflects not only the latest favourable news on metallurgy, but also a decent outlook for the tungsten price, and crucially, a stated interest from...