Anything's possible and we do have excellent rutile hits at a couple of our sites and you are on trend re future demand from 3D printing. However whilst ILU might be watching us I would think we are well off being a target for them at this stage. We're at the early stages of proving up resources and based on their dual attempts to acquire Kenmare, they aren't chasing greenfield which is where we are in terms of what they need. They want to keep their pipeline solid for decades and their scale in the industry demands both volume and quality - speculative acquisitions would be secondary considerations for now.
That's not to say we're out of the game entirely - for someone. The next couple of months will see a run of news announcements based on the announcement opening this thread. At this stage we are waiting to hear from all the drilling activity of the last few months. From what I can work out we are due:
- Drill results on Madimba
- announcement on resource estimate for Tajiri. The announcement states
" Resource estimation work has now been initiated for Tajiri and Tajiri North with JORC 2012 Compliant estimates expected within two months." I'm looking forward to this based on some of those excellent drill holes. I don't think the initial indicated results will be huge but hopefully they will be strong.
Given that they are moving fast on getting initial JORC on Tajiri perhaps we might see a JORC not long after for Madimba as well?
Separately, as previously noted,the announcement made reference to a couple of other things that we'll hopefully get an update on as they could be material to strategic direction:
- the mention of a plan to mine Fungoni on a low cost basis (I'm very interested in this particularly because of the bit, in the Investor Presentation that followed, about producing in 2017 - cash flow sometime in 2017 would be very welcome!) We've already got a jorc zircon resource there which has enabled them to move to scoping study per the announcement:
"Scoping Study at Fungoni (Indicated Resource of 11 million tonnes @3.1% THM) is near completion. Initial results indicate that a small operation could be feasible because of the zircon‐rich nature of the mineralisation."
It's not a world changing deposit by any stretch but a small scale modest approach might work. If it's feasible (Tom Eadie seems to suggest so in the announcement) then I think that will be encouraging as the other deposits being drilled appear stronger on results to date. That would suggest potentially 3 separate JORC deposits that might support positive scoping studies this year.
- the mention of alternative exploration in Tanzania. As I said earlier in the thread , I'm nervous about this. I understand the desire to try and get some glam/attention to the company with sands being dull at the best of times let alone in these the worst of times. My concern is diffusion of focus. Nevertheless the company has a number of competent people on board so I'm at least open now to see what they have in mind.
The opening announcement referenced a few possible mineral targets - lithium, tantalum and cobalt (which we've just sold off in the Torrens deal). Lithium was the glam one so I've been doing some research.
So far I have found only one lithium play in Tanzania. It's an Aussie company, Liontown Resources (LTR) who recently acquired a lithium prospective area and subsequently announced trenching results. If you check their thread you will see an announcement for High Grade Lithium and Tantalum results from the trenches. They have definitely found lithium but lithium is not rare and comes in more than one form which cannot all currently be economically exploited. I have learned that the magic form is spodumene, the common but uneconomical form is lepidolite (mica) , LTR have so far only identified the expensive form, lepidolite. This has underwhelmed the market and is not an encouragement for STA on that front. That doesn't mean LTR won't yet find spodumene, they well might as it is found in association but we will need to do better early to justify spreading our focus.
In summary. For a sub 1 cent stock there are a lot of interesting things happening.
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