News

May 20, 2008

Stepping Out With Fluorspar: Tertiary Minerals Enjoys A Bounce

By Rob Davies

After a long period in which there was little news flow, Tertiary Minerals is once again starting to attract attention on the back of some good old fashioned exploration success. The company still has its interest in the Ghurayyah tantalum-niobium deposit in Saudi Arabia, but it remains bogged down in red tape. If and when it is commercialised the strong demand for both tantalum and niobium will make it very appealing.

But in the meantime executive chairman Patrick Cheetham has been getting on with developing a property in Sweden that also aims to feed into the steel industry. While niobium has very specialised uses in high strength steels, the fluorspar to be found at the company’s Storuman deposit is widely used as a flux in the steel and aluminium industries, and as a source of hydrofluoric acid, the basic building block for PTFE, the non-stick coating that comes with Teflon cookery ware.

Tertiary...