It's good to see that the company is still doing all that it can...

It's good to see that the company is still doing all that it can to promote its tungsten mine in the UK.  Interesting to see what the sp will be next week, once news comes out of this visit by the analyst from the Cantor mining team, the visit to the mine site was on the 12th of March yesterday UK time.

As long as there isn't any problems at the mine site, we should see a re-rate soon of the sp of WLF!



South-West of the UK: A reawakening mining jurisdiction

The Cantor mining team made a two day visit to the south west corner of England to visit a reawakening mining jurisdiction that is both exciting for the economic development of Devon and Cornwall and for the UK's national mining future.

As well as visiting some earlier stage tin and tungsten operations in Cornwall we were part of a large group of analysts, brokers and journalists who made the journey to south Devon yesterday to see first hand the ongoing development of Wolf Mineral's Hemerden tungsten-tin project. In short, we were impressed. The development of Hemerden, Britain's first new metal mine in four decades, is currently running on time and on budget for first concentrate delivery to the off-takers in September.

Having visited the project two years ago, before any significant development had taken place, the project's status now seems remarkable. Where once there were green fields flanked by china clay works, there is now a rapidly maturing construction project with 350 staff and contractors well advanced in preparing the open pit, building the processing plant and laying out the tailings storage facility (TSF). The local authorities and communities are reported to be firmly behind the scheme and the latest phase of recruitment attracted 900 applications for just 40 positions.

The project contractor is due to hand over the completed and functioning plant to WLFE on 8 August. WLFE will then begin a steady ramp up over the following 6 months towards nameplate throughput capacity of 3Mt/yr. Steady state operation should result in annual production of 3.5kt of tungsten in concentrate (and 0.5kt of tin, or c. 10% of revenue) during an initial 10 year life of mine. The company estimate that this level of output will make Hemerden the second largest tungsten operation in the western world. However, management believe additional tungsten supply equivalent to Hemerden's annual production rate is going to be required y-o-y if the forecast 4-5% annual growth rate in demand is to be met. There is little clarity on new sources of supply beyond Hemerden in the short term, the outlook for tungsten pricing looks positive with little substitution available in the major demand sector of cutting and tooling.

Management believe Hemerden may be able to provide some of the y-o-y additional supply required via modest changes to the planning conditions such as extending the daily working hours, moving to 7/7 day mill operation and operating the mill above nameplate capacity. This additional mill capacity could be met by widening and steepening the pit walls to allow further mining of this large orebody at depth and along strike. On this front the company expects to release new a new JORC estimate on the project shortly.

Versus current prices around $260-300/mtu, All in costs are forecast at US$128/mtu with debt repayments, starting in Mar-16, equivalent