Frontier Resources Ltd (FNT) – Moving into the next Frontier soon!

Equity Analyst: Peter Koay

Target Price: ~$0.50 (Current price: $0.25/share)
Current Mkt Cap: $51.3M

Frontier Resources Ltd (FNT) –
Moving into the next Frontier soon!

I think that this article is long overdue, considering that I had my eyes on this company for a period of time. Imagine with me for a while the following scene:

“A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good)”

(emphasis mine) [Genesis 2:10-11]

“The gold of that land is good!!”

Although PNG may not be the land of Havilah (it could very well be though!), the words above aptly describe the few pieces of land that FNT is exploring now.

FNT has exploration permits for the following lands in PNG:

1. Andewa
2. Bulago
3. Leonard Schultz
4. Likuruanga
5. Central New Britain
6. East New Britain

I usually use a few key characteristics to determine which junior mining explorers I would invest in (and FNT seems to meet the few criteria that I have):

1. A potential resource in the ground that has a ‘WOW’ factor –

Typically, we see a lot of 3 to 5g/t of gold results from many gold exploration companies. These grades are usually sufficient to justify a world-class mine (provided that it’s a huge land with similar grades). However, some of the FNT’s exploration results are showing in the order of 10-100g/t of gold! Look at their Bulago results!! WOWW!! “The gold of that land is good!!”

If the contained resource is only in the few hundred thousand ounces of gold range, this usually doesn’t cause sufficient excitement among ASX investors that is necessary to send its shares skyrocketing. With high-grade gold mineralization implied from high gold concentrations, FNT has a much greater potential to have a mouth-dropping effect on the investors.

A mixture of outcrop channel samples and drilling results from FNT’s initial exploration lend a lot of weight to expectations that they will eventually be gigantic economical mines:

1. Andewa – 7.9m of 10.01g/t gold, 10.8m of 7.4g/t gold, 3m of 10.97g/t gold, 5m of 18.5g/t gold, 3m of 14.26g/t gold, 15.6m of 5.12g/t gold. (Potential Gold Mine)

2. Bulago – 27m of 66.8g/t of gold, 4m of 135.6g/t gold, 9m of 64.0g/t gold, 16m of 36.5g/t gold, 18m of 40.3g/t gold, 7.5m of 67.0g/t gold and 9m of 24.0g/t gold. (Potential Gold Mine)

3. Leonard Schultz – 16m of 18.60g/t gold within 76m of 5.35g/t gold, 22m of 2.71g/t gold and 36m of 1.15g/t gold. (Potential Nickel Gold Mine)

4. Likuruanga – 55m of 5.8g/t gold, 10m of 5.1g/t gold, 70m of 1.7g/t gold, 27m of 0.71% Copper & 66m of 0.42% Copper. (Potential Copper-Gold Mine)

5. Central New Britain – 7km x 2.5km Porphyry Cu/Mo (No results yet, but a potential Cu-Mo mine, similar to Marengo’s Yandera Project)

6. East New Britain – 10.9m of 26.9g/t gold, 2m of 16.9g/t gold, 4m of 9.84g/t gold. (Potential Gold Mine)

2. Have a successful track record in exploration and project development experience

FNT has been around the mining picture for a long time in PNG. In fact, they were very close to start developing a world-class project back in 2008…until the Australian Govt interfered by influencing PNG Govt to not renew FNT’s exploration lease as their deposit is very close to the Kokoda Track. Their indicated & inferred resource at that time was proven to be 213.6MT @ 0.51% Cu Equivalent (1.08Mt Cu Eq).

To read about their Feasibility Study on Kodu Deposit:

http://www.asx.com.au/asx/statistics/displayAnnouncement.do?display=pdf&idsId=00784598

To read about the PNG Govt’s decision not to renew their exploration license, see:

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20081031/pdf/31dc2clxcrgdhq.pdf

Also, Peter McNeil had been managing director of FNT since he listed it in 2003. In words extracted from an interview with him (refer to http://www.topstocks.com.au/stock_discussion_forum.php?action=show_thread&threadid=600357),

“I have a masters degree in geochemistry from the university of Houston and started work in PNG in 1985, but I have also worked in Arizona, Newfoundland [Canada], the Eastern Goldfields and the Kimberley of Western Australia. I was a consulting supervisory geologist when the discovery holes were drilled for both the Nimary and Sunrise Dam deposits in 1992 and 1993, and also worked at Lihir. After Nimary, I then stepped straight into Macmin, which was listed by my father [Robert] and Denis O’Neil in December 1993. Frontier [formerly called TasGold] we [Peter and his wife Paige] listed in April 2003 and it was formed as a JV with Macmin. Gold has been my primary career focus, but more recently I have worked with porphyry coppers and massive sulfide deposits. I guess you could say I am a bit of an epithermal, come porphyry person.”

3. Reliable drilling equipment with good (and cheap) crews

FNT owns all the rigs that are being used for drilling. FNT also operates the drill rigs by themselves. This is a cheaper way of drilling, considering that they can side-step all the troubles and higher premium that come with contracting others to perform drilling for them. That being said, for them to test deeper targets (up to 800m), they may have to either modify their existing rigs or to charter some other rigs to get the job done.

4. Good cash position for continuous exploration and drilling to prove up new reserves and does not have to significantly dilute existing shareholders to raise money for exploration

In most recent announcement, FNT spent ~$1.55M cash over past half-year ending 31 Dec’10 with ~$2M. Spending at this rate, this means that FNT has enough cash to last them to about Jun’11. Considering that they’ll be drilling at Andewa, they’ll need cash injection (via capital raising) to continue on with their operations. By releasing the 5000 rock chip samples from Andewa (promised to be done by end Feb’11 but not released yet), assuming that they will be good results, they will provide a lift to the current share price, and hence be able to raise capital with less dilution to existing shareholders.

Also, FNT had secured a very good deal with Ok Tedi in that Ok Tedi has the option to earn 58% of Bulago and Leonard Schultz JVs and up to 80.1% of Likuruanga, Central & East New Britian JVs by spending US$12 million in each of the project within 6 years. This means that the drilling costs can easily be covered by Ok Tedi without the need to raise capital to drill these target areas. The only drilling costs that FNT would need to raise is for Andewa project and for the other suite of projects in Tasmania, Australia.

5. Have good local engagement and relationship

FNT’s boss, Peter McNeil had spent his past 27 years in PNG. Some of the PNG national crews he currently has had been with him from the beginning of this company. With someone who’s been inside for past 27 years, I would think he’s got quite some insights as to how to best operate within PNG. In addition, the JV with Ok Tedi will allow it to have access to many influential people within PNG as Ok Tedi is mostly owned by the PNG people.

Other reasons contributing to why FNT may be quite a good bet:

6. Peter McNeil has recently quit his chairmanship in CopperMoly Ltd to focus more on FNT

If FNT’s prospects were not good, why would the MD quit his other involvement to spend more time on it? Seems that he’s keen to move faster with the development of FNT, which he has a huge stake in it.

7. FNT has recently submitted to obtain an exploration license for Mt Schrader

This new license is a license that covers the area that surrounds Mt Andewa. This new area shall be 2477sq km, compared to Mt Andewa’s license which covers only a 21 sq km area. Now, why did FNT make this move? If the results coming from Mt Andewa are not good, why would FNT grab more of the land surrounding Mt Andewa? Seems like they've got some real stuff coming out from Mt Andewa. You can see the land size comparison below:

8. OK Tedi’s involvement as a JV Partner

Ok Tedi hosts a world-class copper mine, directly employs 2000 people, and had been producing for 20+ years. OTML's shareholders are PNG Sustainable Development Program Limited, (52 per cent), Inmet Mining Ltd (18 per cent) and the PNG Government (30 per cent). The PNG Government holds equity directly (15 per cent) and on behalf of the Western Province (12.5 per cent) and landowners from the mine area (2.5 per cent).

Considering that Ok Tedi’s mine is going to be shut in 2013 (with a potential for mine-life extension to 2022 that’s still in feasibility phase), they would be quite desperate to find another world-class mine to keep them in business.

So far, Ok Tedi has only FNT as its JV Partner in prospecting for more resources. In one sense, Ok Tedi has all its eggs in one basket (i.e. FNT)!! Now, why would a world-class producer who had been operating for ~25 years, when facing an ‘extinction’ threat, bet the future of their company on one company, i.e. FNT?

They must have very strong reasons to do so. And considering the results they’ve got in Bulago so far, it’s not a surprise that they have a higher priority to drill it in Apr’11 (5000m drilling program planned).

Share Price Analysis:

The share price of FNT had gone up from $0.07 back in Nov’10 to a high of $0.42 in Feb’11 (due to speculation that very good results shall be released from the Andewa’s 5000 rock chip samples). This is a highly active and volatile stock with speculators watching with eagle’s eyes, keen to exploit its potential. It is not a share for the faint-hearted!

With drilling upcoming in April on both Andewa and Bulago projects, I believe that there will be huge upside to the share price as the drilling results are released in 2Q’11. If speculation on Andewa’s results was sufficient to push the share price to $0.42, with the definitive drilling results coming from both upcoming Andewa and Bulago drilling campaigns (which I’m quite confident that they’ll bode well), $0.50 is not an impossible target to reach.

With Peter McNeil giving a presentation next Wed in Melbourne (23 March), it’s quite likely that he’ll be talking about the plans for the drilling programme in Apr’11. And quite likely, he may release results from Andewa’s rock chip samples prior to his presentation, this will cause excitement amongst the investors and will push the share price up.

Conclusion:

FNT is a highly prospective junior explorer, a quite stable company from the perspective of having a very good world-class JV Partner who’s offered to pay for drilling costs for up to 5 of the JV areas and providing their own drilling rig + sample results analysis, having a good Managing Director who has a lot of experience in PNG, owns its drilling rigs with low-cost drilling crews, and having a diversified portfolio that have high-grade gold mineralization.

If FNT manages to prove 1 out of the 3 potential world-class mines (Bulago, Andewa and Leonard Schultz), this will transform FNT to become a stakeholder in a potential world-class gold mine. Its shares won’t be worth 25 cents anymore. FNT is moving to the next Frontier soon as the drilling program starts in Apr'11.

Of course, if it manages to prove that it's got 3 world-class mines, this share would certainly be worth a few dollars. This can be a potential Lihir Gold in the making (taken over by NewCrest for $9.5B)!

Note: The projects within Australia have not been mentioned so far as I see them as peripheral projects that FNT owns. The main flagship projects for FNT shall be the PNG projects, which will bring much more significant cashflows to FNT. However, if FNT manages to discover more resources in Tasmania, that will be a bonus to the share price.






Disclosure: The analyst does have an interest in FNT. This share analysis does not represent an investment advisory service as no subscription or management fees are charged. The contents of the article are provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice or as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial instrument. Any investment decisions carried out based on information, analysis, or commentary provided here is solely your responsibility. You should consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.

Go Go Go - MGO - Marengo!

Equity Analyst: Peter Koay

Date: 16 March 2011

Target Price: ~A$1.00/share (18-24 months investment horizon)

MARENGO MINING LTD (MGO)
The next OZ Minerals in the making

PNG can be considered to be the upcoming rising star as a mining destination of the 21^st century. It is a resources rich nation, soon to be able to get into the ranks of Australia and Chile.

Now, how do we get exposure to this upcoming mining giant country? Sifting through a number of PNG mining companies that are listed on ASX over a weekend, a very interesting stock had been discovered to have the potential to become the next OZ Minerals, i.e. MARENGO MINING LIMITED. (By the way, OZ Minerals had recently been a darling stock in ASX as it’s generating a huge pile of cash from its Prominent Hill copper and gold mine.)

OZ Mineral’s Prominent Hill mine has a remaining 8 year mine-life from now, with latest reserves (as at Jun 2010) of 5.5 billion pounds of copper (1.135 billion pounds Measured, 2.43 billion pounds Indicated, 1.88 billion pounds Inferred) and 3.1 million ounces of gold (0.5Moz Measured, 1.4Moz Indicated, 1.2Moz inferred).  Refer to http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20101109/pdf/31trr9pnqgpjlc.pdf .

Assuming copper price of US$4/lb and gold of US$1300/oz, that means OZ Minerals has $22B of copper and $4B of gold, a total of US$26B of resources (Measured+Indicated+Inferred).

Comparing MGO’s resources with OZL’s resources (refer to http://asx.com.au/asxpdf/20110228/pdf/41x36stqj3wspq.pdf) , MGO currently has 6.5 billion pounds of copper (1 billion pounds measured, 1.9 billion pounds indicated, 3.6 billion pounds Inferred). Assume same copper price of US$4/lb, it has a whopping US$26B worth of COPPER!!

In addition, MGO has a total of 204M pounds of Molydenum (45M pounds Measured, 68M pounds Indicated, 91M pounds Inferred). Molydenum is a material used to manufacture high corrosion-resistance stainless steel (e.g. super duplex steel). Assume price of Molydenum of US$20/lb, this means MGO has US$4B worth of Molydenum!!

This brings it to a total of US$30B worth of resource!!! MGO’s resource can be even bigger than OZL!! Doing a sensitivity analysis, you may say that that’s just a lot of inferred category stuff in MGO’s resource statement. If the inferred category is taken out and a comparison is made, OZL should have US$14.3B of copper and US$2.47B of gold, which brings to a total of $16.8B. MGO should have US$11.6B of copper and $2.26B of Molydenum, that brings it to US$13.8B. Basically, the message is, MGO would be in the comparable league of OZL category of companies!

Now, current market capital of OZL is A$4.81B with 3.24B shares issued. However, MGO’s current market capital is only A$273.36M. OZL’s mkt cap is now 17 times greater than MGO. However, both companies have almost the same amount of resources.

The following are a few reasons on why you may want to buy Marengo Mining Ltd at its current level (i.e. $0.27-$0.30/share):

Comparison Category	OZ Minerals (OZL)	Marengo Mining Ltd (MGO)
Resource (Measured+Indicated+Inferred)	US$30B	US$26B
Market Capital	A$4790M (at $1.48/share)	A$274M (at $0.275/share)
# of issued shares (M)	3240	994

Risk is proportionate to returns: the higher the risk, the bigger the returns. But the higher the risks, the bigger the discount to the share price too. If there’s a huge discount to the share price due to inherent risks of the share, then, we ought to ask: What are the risks that MGO have?

A few of MGO’s risks can be outlined and summarized as follows:

1. Management Risk: Low – Les Emery used to be the managing director for Lynas Corporation. Lynas is doing very well now, all thanks to Emery, who helped guided Lynas to get the lease for the mines that they now own. Do you think he has the capability to repeat a success story with MGO? Quite likely...

2. Capital Funding Risk:
1. Risk of getting the money to fund the capital cost to build the plant is low with China NonFerrous Metal Industry’s Foreign Engineering and Construction Co. Ltd (“NFC”) offering to provide at least 70% of the capital cost or help MGO connect with Chinese banks to lend their capital. If 70% of the funding is obtained via a Chinese bank debt, that means NFC has to fund it by equity issue of US$480M. With current share price, it needs to issue up to 1.8 billion shares – making it similar to OZL’s # of issued shares. But of course, the better option is to fund it all entirely with debt and pay it off. However, it is quite likely that NFC would try as much as possible to negotiate a higher % of equity stake in MGO.

3. Yandera Project Risks:
1. Risk of cost blow-out: Low, due to the arrangement of a lump sum EPC Project with NFC. In a lump-sum project environment, the real exposure is to claims lodged by the EPC Contractor against the company. However, with the partnering arrangement in place, this risk is minimized. The Chinese would not want to risk a backlash by Australian company when they are the ones needing the resource, and they wouldn't want to sink a company which they themselves have a huge stake in (when they participate in the equity offering and arrangement of bank debt). US$1.6B capital cost is needed to get the plant to 25M tonnes/year production.

2. Geological Risk: Low. PNG is a geologically active area (lots of earthquakes). However, this risk is low considering that there are so many major companies which are already investing into PNG on the same main island, e.g. ExxonMobil. If ExxonMobil (very conservative oil company) is comfortable with the risk, I think we should be quite comfortable with it too.

3. Environmental Risk: Medium. This is the only risk that could be a bigger challenge for the company. The possible ways for MGO to manage the mining tailings is to build a dam, use DSTP (Deep Sea Tailings Placement) similar to Ramu Cobalt-Nickel Mine and Lihir Projects, or to build a processing plant to treat the wastes. The PNG govt is quite likely not to have a huge appetite to build a dam to contain the mining waste as OK Tedi’s dam was damaged in an earthquake back in 1984, which was a factor contributing to OK Tedi dumping mining wastes straight into the river systems leading to a huge environmental disaster. Having a potential damage by earthquake of a dam, and end up releasing tonnes and tonnes of toxic wastes into the environment would be quite unacceptable. Possibly, the DSTP method may work for MGO.  

4. Product Sales Risk : Low. NFC has already offered to off-take a portion of the product from the Yandera project as part of the MOU signed with NFC. MGO has already secured a big customer!! And with the rising world demand for copper (China being a big driver of this demand), there shouldn't be any concerns on whether they could sell the product.

5. Political/Sovereign Risk: Low. MGO has very good political connections. It has the former PNG Mining Minister (Samuel Akoitai) and the former PNG PRIME MINISTER (Sir Rabbie Namaliu) within its board of directors!! These men would be able to help MGO in navigating to get the mining licenses/leases renewed and to assist in getting the environmental approvals required.

6. Construction Risk: Low. With NFC successfully constructing the nearby Ramu Cobalt-Nickel mine, NFC should have the capability to construct and deliver the project in PNG on time for a early 2014 start-up.

7. Resource Upgrade Likelihood: High. MGO still has $71M in cash as of 31 Dec 2010. This money is enough for it to continue its drilling program around the resource and prove more of the inferred resource into the indicated category. As drilling continues, the company shall keep on adding value to the company. When good news is released on any upgrade in the resource, this will drive the share price even higher.
8. Production Costs Risk: Low. See graph as per Note 2 below. The forecasted production cost is about $0.90/lb. This means that the copper price can drop even up to $2/lb (almost 50% drop from today's prices), and MGO can still keep the plant operating. The cost can be kept quite low due to lower wages of PNG nationals being hired. 

NPV Analysis:

A basic Yandera project NPV analysis based on available information shows us how much the share price should be. Based on a 10% discounting factor (i.e. 10% cost of capital), this will give it a current NPV of $2.67/share based on the following assumptions: 

1. 0.57% grade copper equivalent (including Mo)
2. Copper/Mo recovery factor: 0.8

3. 20 year mine life (with startup in 2014)

4. 25M tonnes of ore per year 

5. Net profit margin of 56% (as per OK Tedi most recent net profit margin)

6. 10% discounting factor

7. US$1.6B capital cost

8. AUD to US$ conversion ratio = 1:1  
9. Copper price: US$4.30/lb

Sensitivity analysis:

Even if the capital cost of that plant is US$2.5B (assuming another extra US$900M to deal with the mining tailings), the NPV for the project will lead us to $1.76/share. This is not taking into account that the company will find and prove more reserves with its continuous drilling program.


Even if copper price drops to US$2/lb (2008 GFC levels), the NPV for this project based on current resources level and 25MT/annum production is still $0.38/share (higher than current share price)!!

Share Price Risk Analysis:

§  MGO has recently issued 110M shares (fully subscribed) at a price of C$0.25/share (which is about A$0.255/share) to institutional investors. This helps set a floor price. Major institutional investors will generally not allow the share price to go below the price for which they’ve obtained the shares.

§  Share price has a huge potential to spike up as soon as Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) is released (targeted for 1Q’11). It’s now getting to mid-March, so the DFS report is not far away (in the next 2 weeks). 

§  Strong institutional shareholders participating in recent offerings, implying low risk of share price falling any further than current levels:

Biggest shareholder: Sentient - 22.2%

Sentient has proven themselves to be very astute stock-picker of stocks that have potential to be a takeover target. MGO can be one soon! Refer to the following article on the track record of Sentient Equity fund: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/private-equity-fund-shines-in-spotting-takeover-deals/article1918226/

2^nd biggest shareholder: Quantum Partners – 18.9%

Quantum Partners is a fund owned by George Soros. George Soros is a man who knows how to profit from financial crises. He still managed to earn $1.1 billion while the rest of the investment companies were reeling from the recent 2007/08 GFC. 

3^rd biggest shareholder: OMERS (Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System) – 6.1%.

Supposedly, a retirement fund usually should be quite risk-averse. This gives us another comfort factor that the risk of investing in this company is low.

Conclusion:

From market capitalization comparison, MGO will soon become another OZL with market cap in the order of $3B. This would mean that MGO will have to be $3/share to be a $3B market cap company with current # of shares issued. Assuming that 3B shares have been issued then, it has to be at least $1/share for it to be a $3B Market Cap company. 

From DCF analysis, MGO will also be $1.76-$2.67/share provided that all risks mentioned above are managed properly.

From PE Ratio analysis, at 25M tonnes/year production, MGO will generate a net profit in the order of US$600M per year!  Assuming a 3 billion issued shares (similar to OZL now), and at the price of $2.00/share for MGO, the PE ratio will just be 10. When it ramps up to 50M tonnes/year production, the PE ratio will just be 5! 

Hence, MGO share price will be able to go up to at least to $1.00/share in 1.5-2 years time (very conservative estimate). This is not taking into account all the upsides that MGO has by its continuous drilling program in the 1900km2 tenement that it has in PNG. 

Do you want to be a part of the exciting story of Yandera Project in PNG? It's your choice...

Note: Marengo is Napolean’s favourite horse who had faithfully served him for 35 years. MGO is hoping to faithfully serve all who’re willing to buy a stake into it. 


Note 2: Additional Chart from http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20100901/pdf/31s8g5wswdv31j.pdf 
Marengo is forecasted to be one of the lowest cost producers of copper (on a per lb basis), almost next to OZ Minerals. 

Disclosure: The analyst is a long-term shareholder of MGO. This share analysis does not represent an investment advisory service as no subscription or management fees are charged. The contents of the article are provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice or as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial instrument. Any investment decisions carried out based on information, analysis, or commentary provided here is solely your responsibility. You should consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.

Global Gold Mining Production

This link is pretty interesting :)

Global Gold Mining Production

Global Gold Mining Production

An Interactive Map

Where Does the Gold Come From?

Gold-producing countries are found on all continents, and represent the gamut of economies from developed super-powers to small, emerging market countries. With gold’s spectacular rise in price and related demand, it’s worth your time to know a little bit about where all the gold comes from.

While some believe that all of the major gold deposits in the world have already been discovered, others counter that much of the world is unexplored, leaving open the possibility of deposits yet to be found. The possibility also still remains that gold may be found in more familiar areas.

Click on the map to learn more about the top-ten gold-producing countries of 2009.

  

Minemakers Limited (ASX) – Worth investing???? Not sure.....

Two main projects which they claim as world-class deposit.

Current Mkt Cap = $123M with 227M shares issued. 

1. Namibia Project - 49% ownership by MAK (indirect & direct ownership). Namibia is in Africa and this project is an offshore project, which basically means that they're mining from the seabed. MAK plans to use dredging boats to get the job done. They claim to have Indicated resource of 73.9M tonnes @ 20.57% P2O5 (worth US$2.28B based on price of US$150/tonne) and Inferred Category of 1507M tonnes at 18.7% (worth US$42.2B). 

2. Wonarah Project - 100% ownership.

So far, it is hard to find a comparable company to evaluate how much MAK's price would go up to.

Phosphate producers in Australia are listed as follows( http://www.australian-phosphate.com/phosphate-stocks.html  ) However, there are not any companies in ASX that's actually producing phosphate rock only. Incitec Pivot is the only company that's producing phosphate, but they are an integrated producer (upstream & downstream), i.e. they mine the rock phosphate at Phosphate Hill (producing 2M tonnes/year) and then use sulphuric acid from nearby manufacturing facilities to manufacture fertiliser directly and sell fertilisers directly into the market. Incitec Pivot's mkt cap is A$7.52B with 1.63B share issued. Phosphate Hill has 89.9MTonnes (@24.3% P2O5) back in 2003. They mine 2M tonnes/year, so that means their proved and probable reserves now is probably 74M tonnes now.  

Seabed rock phosphate mining is not a common practice, in fact, there's no company that can be found to have done it. Someone however, has thought of doing it in New Zealand:

http://rockphosphate.co.nz/news/archives/2010/05/25/chatham-seabed-phosphate-worth-67-billion/

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/4508172/Mining-the-depths-more-than-pie-in-the-sky

This seems to be a new way of applying existing technology of dredging. Hence, the Namibia project seems to be still quite innovative and fairly new method of producing phosphate rocks. The environmental application process could be a torturous path as this process involves the release of water back into the sea as the boat dredges the seabed. (If you've watched the dredging methodology shared by the company in a recent presentation, you'll be able to see how much water is pumped straight into the sea as the dredging continues). 

MAK seems to have a lot of appetite for new technology. They've bought a stake of 6.67% in FDC, which is a USA Florida-based company that's developing a dry kiln technology and filed for a patent. This technology will allow conversion of rock phosphate to phosphoric acid without much use of sulfuric acid. MAK is keen to get further downstream into processing their rock phosphate into fertilizer just as what Incitec Pivot is doing now. However, due to the unavailability of a sulfuric acid plant nearby to provide feedstock to MAK plant, they've got to import sulfuric acid or to manufacture it themselves by importing sulfur. If FDC's patent works, then MAK will be the 1st plant to be built in this world that's using the newly patented fertilizer production process. 

If MAK just sell their ore as DSO (Direct Shipping Ore), then, they'll need to build a 260km railway to link to the Adelaide-Darwin railway. This option is not one that's adopted by the company now as it's not that economical. 


Until now, it's not easily verified how much Indicated and how much Inferred resource MAK actually has. They're not releasing reports on "upgrade on resource" kind of statements. There's a statement in the Dec 2010 quarterly activities that say: "Only about 15% has been drilled sufficient densely as yet to enable JORC & NI43-101 resource estimations, but those sub-areas contain an estimated 620Mt @ 18%P2O5 using a 10% cut-off, totalling the Indicated (289Mt @18.5%) and the Inferred categories (331Mt @17% P2O5)." Based on this, it seems that they don't have any JORC-compliant categorization of their resource yet.

Also, MAK seems quite scattered in their focus-area on minerals. They're trying to mine for tin, tungsten & fluorospar in Tasmania through TNT Mines Ltd, gold in Tasmania through BCD, and another project in Namibia which they haven't done any work on it so far. The company ought to focus on a FLAGSHIP project, and it's possible that Namibia is further down the track than the Wonarah Project. This is because the Wonarah Project may need more time to prove the usability of the new dry kiln technology.

Nevertheless, phosphate rocks are something that is really worth looking at. The world is running low on fertilizers soon as population grows and need more food. If you can find another company mining for rock phosphate, please let us know. J

By: Peter Koay
Equity Analyst 

Harmony Gold

Just some updates on PNG in general - Harmony
http://www.har.co.za/businessreview_exploration_png.htm
The New Guinea mobile belt stands out amongst the world's most prospective geological terrains for porphyry copper-gold and epithermal gold mineralisation, with world class deposits including Grasberg-Ertzberg (copper-gold), Porgera (gold), and Ok Tedi (copper-gold). Importantly, the belt is under-explored.
Harmony has built a quality project portfolio comprising over 12 000 square kilometres of exploration and mining tenure in some of the most prospective mineral provinces and emerging gold and copper districts of the New Guinea mobile belt.
In the Morobe Province, Harmony has been active in exploration for the last seven years and the resource base has grown from 7.0Moz to over 45Moz (gold equivalent – refer to the resource growth profile below). Harmony owns 50% of this inventory, and the discovery cost for Harmony's equity ounces is less than $10/oz.

Friday, 4 March 2011
JOINT venture partners Newcrest Mining and Harmony Gold have reported a high-grade hit from the massive Wafi-Golpu copper-gold project in Papua New Guinea which is outside the boundaries of the current resource of 16 million ounces of gold and 4.9 million tonnes of copper.
Drilling intersected 883 metres grading 2.15% copper and 2.23 grams per tonne gold, or 5.33gpt gold equivalent, from 913m, including 628m at 2.82% copper and 3.06gpt gold, or 7.13gpt gold equivalent, from 1043m, using a 1% copper cut-off grade.
The hole represents the highest grade intersection at Golpu to date and extends the known mineralisation by a further 70m north.

Frontier Resources in the news and new maps of New Britain

There is an announcement today from FNT. Basic points include:

• Multiple, areally extensive and strong copper and gold anomalous soil zones have been demonstrated in grid based soil sampling

 which leads to

• Joint Venture partner OTML have indicated they intend to move to 'Advanced Stage Exploration' on the Bulago EL and a 5,000m drilling program with 2 rigs from about mid-April.

Also, it is featured in a small write-up in The Australian newspaper as follows:
PNG copper belts
ANOTHER reader sent some interesting maps of New Britain island in Papua New Guinea, which show three major copper belts crossing the island. There are several Australian players active on New Britain, and two of them had news during the week.
Frontier Resources (FNT) has lodged applications for another 2477sq km around its Andewa project. Drilling there has produced intersections up to 7.9m at 10.01 grams/tonne gold, and Frontier has other projects on New Britain, including a 7km-long copper-molybdenum target, copper-gold at Likuruanga and trenching samples of gold up to 26.9g/t at its East New Britain project.
Coppermoly (COY) says the latest drill holes at Nakru demonstrate copper-gold mineralisation over a 500m strike length. Barrick Gold is spending $20 million to earn a 72 per cent stake in three of Coppermoly's New Britain prospects. New Britain is not at the top of the PNG priority list at MIL Resources (MGK) but it has projects located within two of the three copper belts.
The stock last traded at 3.5c
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/a-follow-up-on-copper-minnow-venturex-resources-and-other-stocks/story-e6frg9ex-1226013129247

Books I am Reading regarding mining investment

Hey Guys/Girls:
Sidetrack a bit here......what I wanted to write of is something that people keep on asking me time and time again.
Questions like
'Where do you get your info?'
'Why do you know so much about this company?'
'How do you know how to calculate the share value?'
'Where do we start if we know nothing about mining or investing?' 
etc etc etc....you get the picture :)
I will give you some books that I think are good guidelines....but before that, let me just assert my point that Knowledge is Power.
I have seen many people get burnt in share trading/investing(probably i should call gambling hehe) in the past....and when you ask them, why they bought a certain share...their answer will be 'Because I heard rumours that.....' or 'My uncle/friend/brother told me that it is a good buy' etc.  When you ask them whether they know who is the CEO, what is the history of the company etc, they don't even have a clue.
My point is - even SOPHISTICATED investors lose money sometimes in the market, so what hope do you have when you don't know anything about the company you are putting your money in?!
The more you know, the more confident you get and the less you are affected by daily ups and downs of the share market (unless you are a day trader, which i am not)
Basic questions you should know about companies are:
1. What does the company mine?  (i know, it is a very simple question, but ask some people that have tens of thousands in the market, and they might not know!)
2. What country does the company mine in?  What kind of political history does that country have, for example ghana, papua new guinea, canada etc?  Is the government stable?
3. What is the demand of the commodity that they are mining?
4. Which stage of mining are they in?  Are they just exploring?  Or they have already started to prove reserves?  Are they at the BFS (Bankable Feasibility Study) yet?  Have they start to produce the minerals yet?  This will determine which stage the company is in and to allow us to compare with other companies in the same stage.
5. Who else is mining in the same area?  What is their market capitalisation as compared to the company that you want to invest in?
6.  Who is the management?  Do they have proven experience?
7.  What is the history of the company? When did it start and what did they acheive so far?
8.  Is the area that they mine fertile?  Have there been any proven reserves surrounding that area?

Most of these questions you will be able to get the answer by simple googling it, or going to wikipedia or the company website, or asx announcements....there is plenty of info online.....just whether we want to find it :)

This will give you a good indication of what industry and background this company is operating in.

Few books that I am reading is
http://www.amazon.com/Junior-Mining-Investor-Profitably-Exploration/dp/0979533503/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298455225&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Investing-Resources-Profit-Outsized-Potential/dp/0470613262/ref=pd_sim_b_8
http://www.amazon.com/Mining-Valuation-Handbook-Investors-Management/dp/0731409833/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

So far, the books are proving to be a gem in helping me to understand the industry better, as i am not a geologist or miner etc......

Have a good day!