BILL Amann and Adrian Black have been involved in many of the key nickel discoveries in Australia’s recent history, but the pair has one major regret: not loading up with shares in the companies for which they were working.
The exploration resumes of the two geology and geophysics consultants make for impressive reading.
Their consultancy, Newexco, was involved in the early stages of major nickel discoveries such as Western Areas’ Spotted Quoll and Flying Fox DEPOSITS and the barnstorming Nova nickel discovery of Sirius Resources.
Their work has helped create billions in shareholder wealth, but their exposure to those riches has generally been limited to their consulting fees.
Now the pair is backing themselves to continue their magic run of exploration success, and have opted to ease their long-held policy of not taking shares in their clients.
The Newexco founders are taking shares in little-known company Mining Projects, a minnow gearing up for a nickel exploration program east of Kalgoorlie.
So far, Mining Projects has found little love beyond the ¬technical boffins — it has a paltry MARKET capitalisation of just $10 million.
But Mr Amman and Mr Black believe Mining Projects’ flagship Roe Hill prospect has all the right ingredients to produce Western Australia’s next nickel discovery.
They are joined by Poseidon Nickel general manager of geol¬ogy Neil Hutchison, himself involved in nickel discoveries at the Win¬darra and Cosmos projects.
He has been appointed to the Mining Projects board in the ¬expectation of boosting the company’s technical capacity.
The dream is for yet another significant nickel discovery that can help ease the lingering regrets about the missed opportunities in the past.
“We’ve had a couple of bad moments,” Mr Amman says.
“Western Areas went from around 14c and ended up at $11.99 at the peak.
“And we’ve seen Sirius go from a cent to as high as $4.09. It makes you feel very sick.”
Newexco’s role in the original Nova discovery is little known.
Neither Mr Amman nor Mr Black are trying to claim all the credit for the find, but ¬rather make the point that ¬exploration usually requires layers of technical contributions in order to succeed.
Mr Amman had worked with Sirius Resources managing director Mark Bennett at Western Mining Corp, and it was he who pushed Sirius when it was down to its last few dollars to put its dwindling cash into drilling the Conductor 1 target that ult¬i¬mately became the Nova DEPOSIT .
“They didn’t have a lot of money in THE BANK at the time, they were sailing pretty close to the wind,” he said.
“Among the anomalies identified was Conductor 1, which we insisted they drill.”
When the first drill hole into Conductor 1 produced rich nickel and copper mineralisation, Mr Amman was one of the first to hear, in a phone call from Mr Bennett.
That initial discovery was the start of a run that would take Sir¬ius from just another penny dreadful to one of the hottest stocks in Australia, with a MARKET cap of more than $1.5 billion.
Now the consultants are ¬pinning their hopes on a 5000m drilling program at Roe Hill east of Kalgoorlie.
The program, which will start in the coming days, will follow up on sniffs of nickel mineralisation picked up by previous explorers.
Mr Hutchison believes modern interpretations and the technical nous of the Newexco team will give the Mining Projects ¬effort a better chance of success than its predecessors.
“The data that’s been collected has been of high quality. It’s been collected properly. But it’s not been understood or interpreted properly,” he said.
“The previous explorers didn’t do a bad JOB ; they just didn’t do a proper job.
“That leaves a lot of opportunities for us.”
