Iron ore’s Lazarus turn, holding above $US90/t for the first time in two years this week, is seeing the rebirth of Yilgarn’s junior ironmongers. First cab off the rank could be Toronto-listed Macarthur Minerals, which has appointed Novus Capital to market a $10 million float of its Australian iron ore and lithium assets on the ASX. Just 15 months after the $6 million sale of the 26 million tonne Ullaring hematite project 175km north-west of Kalgoorlie-Boulder to GIM fell through, the Cliffs neighbour has Singaporean multi-millionaire Rakesh Tulshyan on board to raise the $200 million needed to bring the “shovelready” development online. The Indian-born, Singapore-based dealmaker, who has built his business empire through recycling decommissioned ships for scrap metal at a rate of about 100 vessels a year, has undertaken through his Tulshyan Group to arrange financing, including an initial tranche of $50 million. Mr Tulshyan said he hoped to offtake partially processed ore from the Macarthur project through the Tulshyan Group’s shipping arm, which has a fleet of about 30 vessels, direct to the Asian steel market. “I believe the prospects are good, I believe the company is undervalued and I believe with expenditure we’ve got good prospects,” he said. “We have a good reserve of iron ore that can easily be shipped out, and we could easily offtake it and place it with the steel mills in India as well as China, and other countries also. “We have the ability to acquire, either buy or charter, capesize vessels the moment the ore is ready to be shipped out.” Mr Tulshyan sees an upside in the seaborne iron ore trade, claiming demand from Chinese steel mills means the price could rise further from current levels. A pre-feasibility study released in 2012 put start-up capex for the project at $226 million at the height of the boom, but Brisbane-based Macarthur Minerals chief executive David Taplin said that cost would likely come down. He also claimed there was room to extend the indicated 54.46Mt at 47.2 per cent iron mineral resource, currently slated to produce 2Mtpa of beneficiated ore over 13 years, or 4Mtpa over 61 ⁄2 years. “The key thing for us is we have previously spent $60 million in the ground for this project,” Mr Taplin said. “We have received renewed interest in the project and we are going to be considering development options for it.” The rising price of iron ore could bring other juniors into the fold, including Cazaly Resources’ 5Mtpa Parker Range project, and could spark renewed talk of expanding the Port of Esperance, currently shipping 11.5Mtpa from Cliffs’ Koolyanobbing Complex. Macarthur Minerals was up 68.75 per cent to 13.5 Canadian cents a share on Tuesday. It anticipates listing in Australia by mid-April.
