article in age Giralia emerges from the lean timesBy Barry...

article in age
Giralia emerges from the lean times
By Barry Fitzgerald
February 16, 2004

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With investors interested again, it's time for junior explorers to parade projects that will fuel the fired-up Chinese dragon.

Buying leverage to the Chinese-led mineral commodities price boom will be one of the main investment themes in 2004.

That means it should be a big year for the junior mineral explorers. They know it too and are scrambling to come up with the type of exploration results that the market is once again eager to reward.

Trouble is, after the years of hunger that prevailed before the price boom kicked off in mid-2003, most of the juniors don't have any depth to their project portfolios.

Their chances of improving their portfolios in response to the price boom are also limited as competition for new ground and advanced exploration properties has become intense.

There are exceptions, particularly among the more hardened explorers. They are the ones that said "no thanks" to the dotcom excursion, preferring to take advantage of the years of lack of interest in the sector to build quality exploration portfolios across the broad spectrum of commodities.


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Their time has arrived. An eager market is keen to hear their story and back their exploration effort, knowing full well that nothing provides as much leverage to a metals price boom as a decent discovery.

Perth-based Giralia Resources is one of those hardened explorers whose time looks to have arrived. Considered by some in the market to be the "best" exploration stock around, the group has set out to make 2004 a big year.

Its exploration portfolio is about as good as its gets for a company currently trading at 16.5¢ a share for a market capitalisation of $15.6 million. That was certainly the feeling among many of those who heard the Giralia story at 26 meetings of brokers and institutional types in an east-coast roadshow last week.

A common response was that the depth of the portfolio was such that it could support the float or spin-off of six new exploration companies. Not that that is about to happen.

The roadshow was the group's first promotional effort in five years. Apart from anything else, it is expected to lead to an underwriting agreement covering the exercise of Giralia's 42 million March 31 options at 15¢ each.

When added to the $1.5 million cash on hand, bringing in $6.3 million with the options exercise means that Giralia will have more than enough to have a serious go at no less than five projects in 2004, not including those joint-venture projects funded by others.

Assembled and refined during the exploration industry's "down time" in the past five years or so, Giralia's exploration portfolio covers the metals you want to be chasing right now: gold, copper and nickel.

The portfolio also holds near-term production opportunities and grassroots exposure to the latest exploration hotspots, plus exposure to some big-time potential overseas.

The near-term production opportunity is at the now fully owned Snake Well gold property in Western Australia.

Giralia moved to full ownership by pre-empting a deal that would have seen Xstrata's stake bounced across to Straits Resources under Xstrata's sale of the exploration portfolio it inherited by taking over MIM.

A drilling campaign aimed at increasing the gold resource base at the lightly explored property to 200,000 ounces in quick fashion is now under way.

A taste of the potential at Snake Well came with a February 5 announcement that drilling on the Mixy lode had returned a 16-metre intersection grading 7.56 grams of gold a tonne.

Apart from the high-grade potential of the prospect's lode system, there is an existing shallow gold resource, including laterite material, that contains 1.08 million tonnes grading two grams a tonne of gold to a depth of 80 metres.

Other Giralia properties that you can expect to hear more about in 2004 include the Daltons nickel and platinum group metals project in WA (earning 75 per cent interest) and the Blue Rose copper/gold discovery in South Australia.

Four joint ventures covering the Ashburton gold play in WA, where others like Cogema, Newcrest and De Beers are spending the money on Giralia ground, could also provide some action.

Garimpeiro's personal favorite is Giralia's Ann Mason copper project in Nevada, acquired from Xstrata/MIM - an old Anaconda Copper project dating back to 1970 that comes with a resource of 495 million tonnes at 0.4 per cent copper.

MIM held it for only a year before being swallowed by Xstrata. MIM was attracted by the potential of a previously unidentified anomaly coincident with a higher-grade zone on the deposit's western margin.

The big money in copper in the next couple of years will be in the US, thanks to the combination of the weak US dollar and soaring copper prices. What's more, there is an almighty scramble by copper traders to secure new supplies on the assumption that consumption in China will continue to soar. Ann Mason buys Giralia into that unfolding squeeze














Giralia emerges from the lean times
By Barry Fitzgerald
February 16, 2004





With investors interested again, it's time for junior explorers to parade projects that will fuel the fired-up Chinese dragon.

Buying leverage to the Chinese-led mineral commodities price boom will be one of the main investment themes in 2004.

That means it should be a big year for the junior mineral explorers. They know it too and are scrambling to come up with the type of exploration results that the market is once again eager to reward.

Trouble is, after the years of hunger that prevailed before the price boom kicked off in mid-2003, most of the juniors don't have any depth to their project portfolios.

Their chances of improving their portfolios in response to the price boom are also limited as competition for new ground and advanced exploration properties has become intense.

There are exceptions, particularly among the more hardened explorers. They are the ones that said "no thanks" to the dotcom excursion, preferring to take advantage of the years of lack of interest in the sector to build quality exploration portfolios across the broad spectrum of commodities.




Their time has arrived. An eager market is keen to hear their story and back their exploration effort, knowing full well that nothing provides as much leverage to a metals price boom as a decent discovery.

Perth-based Giralia Resources is one of those hardened explorers whose time looks to have arrived. Considered by some in the market to be the "best" exploration stock around, the group has set out to make 2004 a big year.

Its exploration portfolio is about as good as its gets for a company currently trading at 16.5¢ a share for a market capitalisation of $15.6 million. That was certainly the feeling among many of those who heard the Giralia story at 26 meetings of brokers and institutional types in an east-coast roadshow last week.

A common response was that the depth of the portfolio was such that it could support the float or spin-off of six new exploration companies. Not that that is about to happen.

The roadshow was the group's first promotional effort in five years. Apart from anything else, it is expected to lead to an underwriting agreement covering the exercise of Giralia's 42 million March 31 options at 15¢ each.

When added to the $1.5 million cash on hand, bringing in $6.3 million with the options exercise means that Giralia will have more than enough to have a serious go at no less than five projects in 2004, not including those joint-venture projects funded by others.

Assembled and refined during the exploration industry's "down time" in the past five years or so, Giralia's exploration portfolio covers the metals you want to be chasing right now: gold, copper and nickel.

The portfolio also holds near-term production opportunities and grassroots exposure to the latest exploration hotspots, plus exposure to some big-time potential overseas.

The near-term production opportunity is at the now fully owned Snake Well gold property in Western Australia.

Giralia moved to full ownership by pre-empting a deal that would have seen Xstrata's stake bounced across to Straits Resources under Xstrata's sale of the exploration portfolio it inherited by taking over MIM.

A drilling campaign aimed at increasing the gold resource base at the lightly explored property to 200,000 ounces in quick fashion is now under way.

A taste of the potential at Snake Well came with a February 5 announcement that drilling on the Mixy lode had returned a 16-metre intersection grading 7.56 grams of gold a tonne.

Apart from the high-grade potential of the prospect's lode system, there is an existing shallow gold resource, including laterite material, that contains 1.08 million tonnes grading two grams a tonne of gold to a depth of 80 metres.

Other Giralia properties that you can expect to hear more about in 2004 include the Daltons nickel and platinum group metals project in WA (earning 75 per cent interest) and the Blue Rose copper/gold discovery in South Australia.

Four joint ventures covering the Ashburton gold play in WA, where others like Cogema, Newcrest and De Beers are spending the money on Giralia ground, could also provide some action.

Garimpeiro's personal favorite is Giralia's Ann Mason copper project in Nevada, acquired from Xstrata/MIM - an old Anaconda Copper project dating back to 1970 that comes with a resource of 495 million tonnes at 0.4 per cent copper.

MIM held it for only a year before being swallowed by Xstrata. MIM was attracted by the potential of a previously unidentified anomaly coincident with a higher-grade zone on the deposit's western margin.

The big money in copper in the next couple of years will be in the US, thanks to the combination of the weak US dollar and soaring copper prices. What's more, there is an almighty scramble by copper traders to secure new supplies on the assumption that consumption in China will continue to soar. Ann Mason buys Giralia into that unfolding squeeze.