"nova...Mcr is still being valued as a pure ni miner as other metals production will be quite a few years away if anything ever eventuates."
In NICKEL, Mincor's goal is to lift its production to greater than 20,000 tonnes per annum of nickel metal contained in ore, and to maintain that production rate for the long term. With six operating mines and two more under construction, Mincor is well on the way to achieving that goal.
In OTHER BASE METALS, Mincor's focus is on exploration targets likely to generate long-life growth assets. A careful process of project acquisition has already generated a strong portfolio, including the Tottenham Copper Project in New South Wales, the Tipperary Zinc Project in Ireland, the Georgina and Bonaparte Zinc-Lead Projects, and the Gascoyne Tungsten-Uranium Project.
1. 21-2-08 Australian nickel producer Mincor Resources NL (ASX: MCR) has generated the first metal resource outside its Kambalda nickel business, today announcing a maiden resource estimate for its 100%- owned Tottenham Copper Project in New South Wales.
“This is a big step forward in our strategy to create additional areas of growth for Mincor”, said Managing Director David Moore, “we aim to create growth opportunities through exploration that will complement our already strongly growing Kambalda nickel business. “This initial resource estimate establishes a significant inventory of copper metal and we believe there is potential to grow this quite substantially. The area is a well-established copper district and we expect to be drilling again within about 6 weeks, aiming in the first instance to lift the current resource to something over 100,000 tonnes of copper metal.”
2. Gascoyne Tungsten-Uranium Project (Mincor 100%) The Gascoyne Tungsten-Uranium Project consists of two granted and 100% owned Exploration Licences and two licence applications covering a total area of 756km2 approximately 350km east of Carnarvon in Western Australia's Gascoyne region. The tenements cover known occurrences of tungsten and uranium as well as copper and gold.
3. Tipperary Zinc-Lead Project (Ireland, Mincor, earning 85%) Mincor holds an outstanding land position in the major Irish Midlands zinc-lead province. Mincor's holdings cover a portion of the Rathdowney Trend, the structural feature that is interpreted to control the location of the major Lisheen and Galmoy ore deposits some 50km to the northeast.
Previous drilling in the area was largely ineffective, as it was too shallow. However a number of holes penetrated to the prospective unit, the Walsortian Limestones, and two of these holes intersected zinc-lead mineralisation, associated, very importantly, with black matrix breccias, considered to be a key ore indicator. This drilling was done by Pasminco, but no follow-up work was carried out due to the financial collapse of that company in the early 2000's.
4. Georgina Zinc Project (Mincor 100%) Mincor holds 9,000km2 in the Georgina Basin of the Northern Territory. The project is based on work done by the Northern Territory Geological Survey, highlighting the potential of the area to host zinc-lead mineralisation. The recent work, involving the study of core from deep oil well drilling, has demonstrated that the overall depth of the basin is much shallower than previously thought. Hence the possibility that mineralisation, the potential for which is widely recognised, may occur at depths shallow enough to be economic.
Mincor's Georgina Project is a very large conceptual play designed to test these concepts. If successful, the potential is for the discovery of an entire multi-deposit zinc-lead province, 100% owned by Mincor.
5. Bonaparte Zinc-Lead Project (Under Application, Mincor 100%) This application area lies in the far north of Western Australia, just north of the town of Kununurra. Work by North Ltd in the early 1990's uncovered a number of soil geochemical and geophysical anomalies in this area, a region of known zinc-lead prospectivity. These anomalies were never followed up by North, and remain as attractive untested drill targets.
6. Lake Cowan Gold Project (Mincor 100%) Mincor's Lake Cowan Gold Project lies at the heart of one of the most sought after gold exploration provinces in Australia. The 21km2 tenement is located between Avoca Resources' Higginsville Gold Project (which includes the recent Trident and Athena discoveries) and the Zuleika South Project. To the north lies the 15 million ounce St Ives Gold Operations and to the south the 5 million ounce Norsemen operations.
The Lake Cowan Gold Project covers part of a large antiform in mafic basalt-gabbro-dolerite rocks adjacent to two of Western Australia's most prolific gold-bearing structures, the Boulder-Lefroy Fault and the Zuleika Shear.
Mincor's tenement has received little past exploration work due to its location under dry lake sediments. However, with modern technology this is less of a hurdle than it was in the past, and Mincor has considerable experience in exploring beneath lake sediments.
MCR Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
