News

April 02, 2008

Spitfire Gets Its Timing Spot On For Involvement In The Manganese Game

By Charles Wyatt

Last November Our Man In Oz wrote an amusing piece about Spitfire Resources entitled “When You’ve Sold It Once, Why Not Sell It Again?” He was referring to Spitfire’s parent company Churchill Mining which listed on Aim in April 2005 on the strength of its South Woodie Woodie manganese project in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The following year Churchill was led by Paul Mazak - now sole managing director - into coal assets on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan, and manganese slipped down the list of priorities. The project was therefore spun off into Spitfire Resources which listed last December, raising a very respectable A$6 million at the time. That the share price is still hovering around the A20 cents listing price says a lot for the management and the project in these difficult times.

The Woodie Woodie manganese project to the north was where larger-than-life Michael Kiernan sharpened his teeth in the public sector running Consolidated Minerals. Consolidated was eventually acquired for a huge sum at the turn of the year by a Ukrainian company called Palmary Enterprises, right under the nose of  Brian Gilbertson, the great deal maker, and only after Kiernan, who now runs Territory Resources, had backed away. Kiernan tends to focus on metal and minerals that are part of...