News

June 05, 2009

Thor Mining Gives Its Old Strategy The Boot As It Models Serious Cost Savings Into Future Operations At Molyhill

By Charles Wyatt

It was one of those coincidences of life that Minesite put in a call to Mick Billing in Australia at the very moment he stepped onto UK soil. He had come to London to see advisers to Thor Mining as it is listed on AIM and has a new slant on the story as regards its Molyhill deposit east of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. He took over the helm of the company about a year ago after another company with which he is involved – Western Desert – injected some much needed cash into it. With hindsight the timing was not too hot, as Mick agrees while sitting in Cannon Street with a glass of cold wine in his hand, but he points out that nobody gets anywhere by sitting around regretting the past. Anyway thanks to Western Desert, Thor has come out on the other side of one of the most horrendous periods the world’s junior mining sector has ever known. What’s more it still has just over A$1 million in the kitty.

What it also has is a pre-feasibility study, a resource estimate and an off-take-agreement, so it is some way down the track. The offtake agreement is with CITIC Australia Trading, an offshoot of the major Chinese multinational CITIC Group, which has agreed to take 100 per cent of the molybdenum and tungsten concentrates produced over the life of the Molyhil mine. At the time this was agreed Mick Billing had not come on board, but the company considered itself to be on the verge of development...