If the price is right: Heron prowls for value assets Charlotte...

If the price is right: Heron prowls for value assets

Charlotte Dudley -- MINING NEWS --
Tuesday, 17 February 2009

HERON Resources has confirmed it is in talks over possible asset purchases as it looks to take advantage of the lower end of the cycle.

Speaking on the sidelines of the RIU Explorers Conference in Perth today, Heron managing director Matthew Longworth said the company was in discussions with a number of interested parties over asset deals, but was yet to identify any one asset of sufficient quality – and at a suitable price – for Heron.

However, as more juniors felt the squeeze of the financial crisis, Longworth said the number and quality of assets available had grown, while price tags had dropped.

“We are looking at a range of opportunities,” he told MiningNews.net.

“We’ve looked at quite few; most haven’t come up to expectations to date. Asset values are only just starting to become attractive and we think some of them have still got a way to go.”

Earlier in the day, Longworth told conference delegates the current economic downturn represented a time of “unprecedented opportunity” for commercially astute companies looking to build their asset bases for the future.

“It’s acquisitions at the bottom of the cycle that build a company,” he said. “And that’s what we intend to achieve over the next twelve to eighteen months.”

And while the fallout from BHP’s failed Ravensthorpe nickel laterite venture combined with the gloomy economic outlook had resulted in some negative sentiment toward Heron’s nickel laterite activity, the bullish MD maintained “good quality assets will finance themselves”.