re: Ann: Discovery of Zircon rich HMS mineral...
MarineParade, I was interested in the prospect of MLM developing a cash flow from mineral sands because they need capital to develop their scandium deposit and a cash flow to cover overheads would be a boon. However mineral sands have been hard hit by a fall in demand over the last couple of years and prices aren't great.
Iluka Resources, an Australian company, produces 33% of the world's zircon supply. The fall in demand mentioned above has led Iluka to run production at just 30% to 40% of capacity.
Next year the industry expects the market to lift somewhat. Given that Iluka has so much spare capacity, I just can't see how MLM can make a buck out of its greenfields resource. Furthermore the Cape York peninsula is pretty iffy as far as environmental and aboriginal concerns go.
MLM will obviously have access to far greater resources than I to judge the potential of their mineral resources project but from my comments above it is pretty evident that I can't get excited about the latest announcement.
MLM Price at posting:
5.6¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
