Juniors get together as copper shines in Queensland GarimpieroBy...

Juniors get together as copper shines in Queensland
Garimpiero
By Barry FitzGerald
December 20, 2004


Robert Champion de Crespigny, left, and Ron Walker come into play.
Photo: Michael Rayner

The continuing strength of the price of copper provides the impetus for a series of consolidation moves.

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Things are hotting up in north-west Queensland's copper belt, with the long expected consolidation of exploration/development interests held by junior mining and exploration groups well under way. The continuing strength of the price of copper underpins it all.


Peter Ingram's Universal Resources is the latest entrant into north-west Queensland's copper consolidation game, with Keith Liddell's CopperCo trying its luck with an opportunistic scrip-only bid, announced on Friday, which values Universal at about $23 million, or 13.88¢ a share.

It's opportunistic because it follows Universal's deal to move to full ownership of the Roseby copper/gold project by taking out the interest held by Bolnisi Gold for a share consideration (65 million shares). Bolnisi distributed the shares to its shareholders, creating selling pressure by those Bolnisi shareholders not interested in the Universal story.

It came as no surprise then that CopperCo was able to start out its bid with an 11.7 per cent shareholding, and with a flagged intention to march to 19.9 per cent.

Universal has also just pulled in $5.77 million from some capital raisings to speed up the development timetable at Roseby, with a combined oxide/sulphide project producing up to 70,000 tonnes a year of copper and up to 25,000 ounces a year of gold by 2007 possible.

So just as Universal gets on a roll, the men from CopperCo have come knocking. They are a formidable combination too. Apart from Liddell's Mineral Securities, CopperCo also has Buka Minerals as a 23 per cent shareholder.

No less than Robert Champion de Crespigny, Ron Walker and Carnegie, Wylie & Co took control of Buka early this year with the aim of creating a new mining house. For de Crespigny, the move into Buka was his first significant resources play since he sold off Normandy Mining to Newmont for $4.3 billion in 2002.

Having said that, there is no god-given right for de Crespigny and friends to end up owning everything they set their sights on. De Crespigny knows that all too well, having been told by Xstrata that it didn't need his help in bidding for WMC.

Universal closed up 1¢ on Friday at 13¢, leaving it below the imputed value of the CopperCo bid. But it's early days, and there is a feeling in the market that much will happen before Universal is all said and done.

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