After surving what can only be described as a diabolical week on the Market , you read snippet's of info as below , and you only realise how under valued really CTM are at the these levels .
If the DOW didn't tank I feel CTM would be in the 2.5c Price range at Close tonight .As we know that's why we love the market .
With news flow to follow , as the Company States,only huge upside from here I suggest .Good luck too all Holders .
Centaurus secures Brazilian nickel-cobalt leg
Last year was a big one for cobalt. The price more than doubled from its 2016 average of $US25,600 a tonne to $US54,600 a tonne, if you don’t mind.
Prices have gone on with things since, with the metal climbing to $US80,750 a tonne this week.
The spectacular price gains reflect cobalt’s status as a critical raw material for cathodes in lithium-ion batteries which are powering the global electric vehicle and energy storage revolution.
Nickel did not have such a great year in 2017, with its annual average of $US4.64/lb representing only a modest improvement on 2016’s $US4.35/lb. But it has come good of late and currently stands at $US6.05/lb.
Despite a big overhang of stockpiles, it is benefitting from the EV and energy storage revolution as it too is a critical raw material in lithium-ion batteries.
Take all that in and it stands to reason that cobalt and nickel are two of the preferred exposures for 2018 and beyond. That’s particularly so for cobalt, the production of which is dominated by the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Congo has just put the wind up the mining industry by positioning itself to bump up royalties on cobalt from 2% to 10% on it declaring the metal to be one of strategic importance.
Given it supplies more than two-thirds of current demand for cobalt, it is safe to assume that it will be declared strategic to the struggling nation.
The royalty increase was part of a broader sweep of changes (including a super tax on profits when commodity prices rise 25% above the assumptions used in a project’s bankable feasibility study) that is now the subject of a fierce pushback by the miners.
Good luck to them. What is more certain is that the DRC’s grab has served to increase the scramble by end-users to find new sources of cobalt. That has come on top of the pressure the end-users are feeling to ensure they source more ethical and auditable supplies than are available from DRC.
It is against that backdrop that the hardy ASX-listed Brazilian explorer Centaurus Metals (CTM) has popped on to the radar.
Centaurus has been knocking around Brazil for years, initially with domestic iron ore production as its focus. A couple of handy iron ore assets continue to be on the books, with realisation efforts underway.
But the game changer for Centaurus has been the swing in its focus to copper-gold, and more recently nickel-cobalt, in Brazil’s mineral rich Carajas province in the north of the South American powerhouse.
Unlike the crowded Australian exploration scene, Brazil is a land of opportunity for juniors. But it is no walk in the park. In-country knowledge and connections are needed. Centaurus has that in spades.
And it has been delivering the company with new opportunities, the likes of which aren’t generally available for juniors in the Australia.
Centaurus’ latest deal over the Itapitanga nickel-cobalt project in the Carajas is an example of that.
Itapitanga covers the southern extension of Anglo American’s Jacare nickel-cobalt deposit, a 307Mt monster with grades of 1.3% nickel and 0.13% cobalt which will come in to its own as non-DRC demands of the EV/battery storage revolution take hold.
Sandwiched between Jacare and Itapitanga sits the king of the Carajas, Brazil’s Vale, with a 15km stretch of ground with known but unpublished nickel-cobalt resources.
Centaurus was able to get away a heavily oversubscribed $2.65m placement to get cracking at Itapitanga and its copper-gold prospects in the Carajas. The initial focus at Itapitanga is to confirm the widths and grade of mineralisation seen at surface by soil sampling and auger drilling, followed immediately by RC drilling.
It will add to the news flow in 2018 to come from the group’s other projects in the Carajas – the Salobo West copper-gold and the Pebas copper project. Salobo West sits 12km from Vale’s big Salobo copper-gold mine.
So in essence then little old Centaurus is walking with and among giants in the Carajas. The hope now is that the earlier promise of its projects in the region gets converted in to some real upside for the company which last traded at 1.4c for a market cap of $29m, excluding tonnes of listed and unlisted options.
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