from the australian newspaper am today

Three little words Kevin Andrusiak | February 14, 2008

THERE'S a surefire way to beat the market blues at the moment and it's so simple that many miners seem to have forgotten.

Three words - resource, production, upgrades.

Tamaya Resources seems to have cottoned on. So have Straits Resources and Sino Gold.

Granted, the market adopted the upswing persona on Thursday as its schizophrenic moods continued to throw leading indices up, down and all around, so, Tamaya's share-price rise of around 18 per cent needs to be taken in that context.

But after having nearly halved in the recent couple of weeks, the rise was welcome relief to the Tamaya faithful and had a lot to do with the 90 per cent increase in mined production since the December quarter at its Punitaqui copper project in Chile.

Milling rates have also improved 22 per cent to 2230 tonnes per day, with Tamaya promising it is on-track to get to the 3000tpd mark by the end of April. Add to that the fact that recoveries have also improved 4 per cent, so far this year, and Tamaya boss Hugh Callaghan is painting a nice picture of what the company could actually become.

But in the tradition of “but wait, there's more”, Tamaya has promised it has enough cookies in the tin and so won't have to bug the market to fund its “expansive” drilling program over 2008/09. Tamaya will, however, use a debt facility with Nedbank Capital worth $US45 million ($49.8 million) to develop its Armenian assets.

It also said that cash costs will fall by $US1.30 a pound by the end of the year as third-party ore purchases are phased out.

dyor