Movement, page-72

The Australian 18-07-2016

But today’s interest is in a little thing called Marindi Metals MZN. It is a $14m company after shooting 0.3c or 33 per cent higher on Friday to all of 1.2c a share. For comparison purposes, Kidman is now a $68m company, and Western Areas is worth $782m.
Friday’s share price jump for Marindi reflects its big ground position on the Forrestania belt, some of it hard up against the Kidman ground. Its directors include guys who were involved with the Bounty gold mine (1989-2001) on the belt, making them well aware that the region is swarming with pegmatite intrusions.
So much so that a while back Marindi secured the services, on an exclusive basis, of Leigh Bettenay. Dr Bettenay is said to have been the first to recognise the Forrestania belt as a host for lithium-bearing pegmatites in 1985,
His work found that their rare element ratios were similar to that found in the pegmatites found at Greenbushes (the big US and Chinese-owned hard rock lithium producer in southeast WA) and the pegmatites found up in the Pilbara.
With his guidance, Marindi is planning a sampling and geophysical program to zero in on prime targets to be tested with the drill bit. Given the market’s response to the Kidman results, the Marindi program will be one to watch.
Having said that, Marindi’s main go has long been its zinc exploration project in the Pilbara, 60km southwest of Newman. It includes the Prairie zinc-lead-silver deposit which is more interesting than it was thanks to metal price improvements since mid-January. But it will be lithium that will drive interest in the stock in the coming months.