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Fertile ground for phosphate hopefuls

Kate Haycock MiningNews.net
Thursday, 8 May 2008

AFTER a bruising start to the session, the market slowly clawed back some ground but miners were left at rather a loss. Livening up the day, however, was some exciting phosphate action.

The mining sector’s average day followed on from drops in spot and three-month contract prices across every metal on the London Metal Exchange.

The biggest news was, instead, the latest commodity bull run (or will that be bubble?). After nickel, uranium and iron ore’s time in the sun, the baton has now passed to phosphate.

Today Uramet followed on from fellow phosphate hopefuls Minemakers and Syndicated Metals, which both had share price flurries on the back of news about the fertiliser ingredient.

Uramet’s shares today boomed 248% after it announced some phosphate-bearing samples from two prospects in the Georgina Basin in the Northern Territory.

Phosphate has become quite the commodity du jour. Prices are reportedly around the $US400 per tonne level – up from $50 last year – and it seems a small contingent of juniors are dusting off exploration results in light of the increasing demand for fertiliser from China and other growing third-world economies.

After hitting a high of A33c, up from the previous day’s close of 8.9c, Uramet’s shares cooled to 26c as some 17 million shares in the company changed hands.