sgw / cabot review - gip status, page-33

re: sgw /cabot review/sabre/sub 10c ? With Haddington it is a case of a company doing everything other than actually declaring its intention to bid for the tantalum assets of the failed Sons of Gwalia. In a series of developments which started in late August, Perth-based Haddington announced an expanded exploration effort, followed in September by a modest profit (A$1.2 million) from its existing tantalum operations, and then in October the formation of a joint venture with two much bigger mining companies as the start of the push to become a world-class tantalum producer. Haddington’s partners in the Tantalum Exploration Alliance are the Japanese trading house, Mitsubishi, and Australia’s leading zinc miner, Zinifex.

Their plan is to accelerate exploration around Haddington’s newly acquired tenements in the Northern Territory, but not at the existing Bald Hill mine which is being operated under a licence agreement with the administrator of Sons of Gwalia. More significantly, the trio appear to be keen to buy Sons of Gwalia’s assets, which constitute the world’s biggest tantalum mine at Greenbushes in the south-west of WA. Formal statements from the partners go to great pains to avoid saying that this is what their joint venture is all about, but it’s not even necessary to read between the lines to get the drift, especially when the first paragraph of the statement announcing the JV said, in part, that the alliance will explore and look for “the acquisition of other tantalum mining and marketing businesses” – to which a reasonable man might ask how many of them are there in Australia, getting an answer of, approximately, one.