smh article

IT APPEARS manganese is overtaking iron ore and uranium as the commodity du jour.

The Ukrainian billionaire Gennadiy Bugolyubov's Palmary Enterprises yesterday reached the 90 per cent threshold needed to proceed with compulsory acquisition of Consolidated Minerals shares, having won a long $1.3 billion takeover battle.

Meanwhile, investors were already piling into another company with a manganese play in the same region of the Pilbara. Tiddler Haoma Mining's shares last week traded at 5c before it announced its North Pole project near Marble Bar had found a rock chip sample with high-grade manganese.

The best sample contained 46 per cent manganese, while another sample contained little manganese but 54.8 per cent iron.

But the second-best manganese sample contained only 15.8 per cent of the steelmaking material - hardly a high grade.

By yesterday, Haoma shares had traded as high as 40c - apparently on speculation it would release more news on the find.

The shares later fell back to close 10.5c higher at 21c after the company told the stock exchange there was nothing new to report.

For a small company, Haoma has high-profile backing.

Its managing director, Gary Morgan, is the executive chairman of market researcher Roy Morgan Research.

Haoma has received technical assistance from the former WMC Resources chief executive Hugh Morgan and was the last directorship held by the bankrupted former corporate raider John Elliott before the corporate regulator banned him as a company director in 2004.

Haoma, which owes a company associated with Mr Morgan $20 million, has been attempting to extract gold from difficult ores in the Pilbara using new metallurgical technology. It also has a joint venture with Fortescue Metals hunting for base metals near the railway the iron ore developer is constructing.

Mr Morgan, who controls 63 per cent of Haoma, yesterday told the Herald his company decided to take rock chip samples at the remote North Pole tenement after a local prospector said the ground contained manganese.

"It's very early days," he said, speaking from France, where he is on holiday. "You wouldn't drill it for a while. You'd have to look at aeromagnetics."