Rising Resources Also .
It appears Darren Gordon and others will be selling this fantastic Story to the Brokers in Sydney and Melbourne next week!!!
CENTAURUS METALS:
Talking about once-in-a-generation opportunities, Centaurus Metals (CTM, trading at 0.9c for a market cap of $24m) has just seized one which gives it a ticket to the battery-led nickel party discussed above.
In what was probably the most significant announcement by a junior at D & D, Centaurus made everyone sit up and take notice when it revealed it had struck an option deal to acquire the Jaguar nickel sulphide project in Brazil from Vale, no less.
Jaguar comes with a foreign resource estimate of a near-surface 40.4mt grading 0.78% nickel for a total of 315,000t of contained metal across a cluster of deposits, with lots of exploration upside to boot.
It is a lot of nickel for a company with a $24m market, particularly, as was mentioned here on May 31 when Centaurus was trading at 0.8c, its market value is pretty much covered by its Jambreiro iron ore project in Minas Gerais state.
Assume long-term-term iron ore prices of $US60-$80/t, Jambreiro could be good for $A20-$A25m in pre-tax operating cashflow. But it is not in production and it has to be said its importance to Centaurus has been overwhelmed by Jaguar.
Jaguar sits in the western portion of the Carajas mineral province and covers 30sqkm of land containing the known foreign resource estimate (based on 55km of diamond drilling by Vale) and at least four exploration targets.
To complete the acquisition, Centaurus is up for a $US250,000 upfront cash payment, the transfer of its Salobo West copper-gold exploration tenements to Vale, two deferred payments totalling $US6.75m and a production royalty of 0.75%.
Vale will have offtake rights (its Onca-Puma nickel mine is in the region) and importantly, preliminary metallurgical testwork by Vale has indicated a high-grade and quality nickel concentrate can be produced from Jaguar’s sulphide mineralisation.
It is not a deal that would have been available to others as it reflects both Centaurus’ long-term commitment to Brazil and Vale’s interest in Salobo West, which is near its Salobo mine, its biggest copper operation.
Centaurus hits the Eastern States next week to promote the Jaguar deal and assuming a good reception, raising some funds to get cracking on Jaguar’s near-term potential as an open-cut producer from higher grade sections of its resource base will a key talking point.
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Next stop SOI blow out
Final stop consolidation... Chew Chew
(20min delay)