Joseph Gutnick plans listing for phosphate Robin Bromby | June...

Joseph Gutnick plans listing for phosphate

Robin Bromby | June 02, 2008


JOSEPH Gutnick is about to make a big splash back into the Australian share market, listing an already well-financed phosphate play in Queensland on the ASX after years of focusing most of his activities to the US.

The legendary Australian mining promoter and Lubavitcher rabbi has seemingly reversed his staged withdrawal from the local market and is working on a plan to have his US-based Legend International Holdings listed here.

After years of great successes (his companies' big gold finds at Bronzewing, Jundee and Plutonic) and crashes (the failure of Centaur Mining & Exploration over laterite nickel in March 2001) here, Mr Gutnick has been very low key in Australia in recent years, more noted for his exits than his entrances.

He has exited Johnson's Well Mining, Astro Diamond Mines and Great Gold Mines to concentrate on raising money in the US -- where Legend was financed. At present, his only locally listed company is Quantum Resources.

Legend, which has a market capitalisation of $US586 million ($614 million), is traded over the counter in the US.

But Legend's management has reportedly concluded that Australian investors are simply not comfortable with the complexities of buying US over-the-counter stocks, hence the plan to have a secondary listing on the Australian Securities Exchange.

The company sees a local listing as logical, considering the operations will be based in Queensland.

But this would involve trading existing shares -- there are no plans for any immediate capital raising here.

Ten days ago, Legend International raised $US100 million from 25 North American and international institutions.

Mr Gutnick is out of Australia and could not be contacted.

Phosphate plays are the latest to excite Australian investors on the back of soaring demand for fertilisers world-wide and rocketing prices for feedstock.

Rock phosphate traded at an average $US42 a tonne between 2001 and 2007 but the price has recently shot through $US400/tonne as the world's farmers struggle to meet the demand from the newly industrialising countries -- especially Brazil, Russia, China and India -- for higher-protein food.

The only Australian manufacturer of phosphate fertilisers, diammonium phosphate and monoammonium phosphate, is Incitec Pivot, which operates the Phosphate Hill mine, 150km southeast of Mount Isa.

Local investors in the past two months have been inundated with announcements from a rash of junior explorers pegging prospective ground for phosphate. Last week, newcomer Phosphate Australia launched a $10 million initial public offering.

But while these companies are facing extensive exploration programs, Mr Gutnick's company has already locked in one big international customer. Legend has a contract with Indian Farmers Fertiliser Co-operative -- that country's largest fertiliser seller -- to supply 3 million tonnes of rock phosphate a year from its Lady Annie project in the Georgina Basin, near Mount Isa.

Legend describes Lady Annie as "one of the largest undeveloped phosphate deposits in the world" and plans to produce 5 million tonnes a year at the project, starting mid-2010.

Lady Annie and associated deposits hold about 1.4 billion tonnes of ore at 16 per cent phosphate, according to a recent Legend presentation.

The development plan is to build a 300km slurry pipeline to Karumba in the Gulf of Carpentaria, the port used by the Century zinc mine.

A recent report on phosphate from brokers BBY said phosphate rock demand was forecast to increase by 33 per cent through to 2020, although some predictions are more bullish than that.