very positive article in minesite.com

minesite.com put out a very positive article last night re VMS ("Venture Minerals Makes Rapid Progress At Mount Lindsay, Just In Time For The Tightening In The Tin Market")
http://www.minesite.com/nc/minews/singlenews/article/venture-minerals-makes-rapid-progress-at-mt-lindsay-just-in-time-for-the-tightening-in-the-tin-mark/41.html

HH is indicating the resource upgrade will be Oct now, followed by the prefeas in Nov.

"...Its been a long time since tin could claim to be the worlds top base metal. Even so, over the past two years the tin price has outperformed its better-known base metal cousins, lead, copper, nickel and aluminium. The reason for tins rise, from around US$10,000 a tonne in late 2008 to recent cash trades at US$20,870 a tonne on the London Metal Exchange, is simplicity itself. Demand is exceeding supply, and it looks like it will continue to do so for some time. That point alone should have investors scurrying about looking for ways to join the tin boom of 2010. One entry point, and one with potentially the greatest leverage to tin and new project development, is Australian-listed Venture Minerals, which has made a significant tin and tungsten discovery in Tasmania, and which is about to enter a period of positive news flow.

First event on the Venture calendar is a resource upgrade at the companys Mt Lindsay project in the north-west of Australias island state. That will be followed within weeks by the release of a pre-feasibility study, which is certain to be positive. That will be followed by an immediate switch into a full feasibility study which will aim at proving the viability of what could turn out to be a world-class tin, tungsten and iron ore project. No wonder Venture refers to Mt Lindsay as three deposits in one. Early scoping studies have already outlined 100,000 tonnes of tin and tungsten combined. As things stand, the market value of the three minerals means that 45 per cent of Mt Lindsays cash flow would come from tin, 35 per cent from tungsten, and 20 per cent from magnetite.

On the market Venture shares have been staging what looks like their third attempt this year to break-out from range-trading between A20 cents and A30 cents. In January the shares ran up to an all-time high of A50 cent, only to fall back. A second upward thrust came in April when Venture got to A40 cents. Last week the shares made a third push above the A40 cent mark, as investors jockeyed for positions, ahead of the resource upgrade and the release of the pre-feasibility study.

Tasmania, despite a reputation for Dark Green politics, also has a century-old reputation as a mining centre, and boasts a conga-line of base metal mines down its wild west coast. Mt Lyell, for example, was once the major source of copper for what old codgers still refer to as The British Empire. It was so important for the war effort back in 1939 that the Australian Government, at the urging of London, sent armaments for the defence of the mine in case of invasion. The armaments: six .303 rifles - take that Adolf!

However, copper was not top of the search wishlist when Ventures chief executive, Hamish Halliday, went exploring in the north-west corner of the island. Instead, he was after iron ore, and he chose as his point of departure a location close to the Savage River magnetite mine of Grange Resources. What awaited Hamish was a base metal surprise. He found the iron ore, but it was in a geological setting also rich in tin and tungsten. A series of skarns, geological rock units altered by chemicals or heat, have been identified on Ventures ground, with just two of an estimated 10 skarns estimated to contain 36 million tonnes of ore using a cut-off grade of 0.4% tin. While might seem a low grade, the twin keys to unlocking value lie in the fact that the tin price is roughly three times that of copper, and tin is 30 times rarer than copper.

Weve been making pretty good progress with exploration and the pre-feasibility study, Hamish told Minesite. Were over the half-way mark with the pre-feasibility study, and thats on schedule for November. Preceding that will be a resource upgrade in October. Were on track with all the studies.

At site, Venture has five drilling rigs at work. Three are pressing on with pre-feasibility work, while two have been assigned to exploration, where the work is on skarns adjoining those that already have a known resource, including the promising-looking Reward skarn. That work is probably the wild card, Hamish said. What were doing with the drilling is pushing our way out from the known into the unknown. The reason weve jumped to the Reward skarn is that we know that is something there from our early iron ore exploration. One of the best iron ore drill hits was a 70 metre zone assaying 0.4% tin.

The search effort at Mt Lindsay is effectively a hunt for parallel orebodies. We cant see any reason why we shouldnt get a another a high-grade section in each of the skarns, Hamish said. If you look at the whole area there are about 10 of those targets which are a bit of a walk up for drilling.

What that all means is that Venture has a series of predictable news events about to start happening, with two wild cards factors also at work. One wild card is the drilling underway at skarns not previously drilled, and the other is in the world tin market where the high price is driving consumer and trading house inquires to Hamishs front door. Theres definitely a new wave of interest in the project, and that applies to the capital markets as well, he said. Were starting to see some pretty impressive traction, mainly because tin is the best performing base metal in the year so far.

Driving the tin market is the combination of high demand for tin for industrial use, and falling supply. The alluvial mines in Indonesia and Malaysia are tired, Hamish said. If you look at the way the industry is balanced, about 70 per cent of Indonesian production is from small miners and theyve already taken the low-hanging fruit. We see a 15,000 to 30,000 tonne shortfall in global tin supply by 2012, in a market that is only 350,000 tonnes, he said.

If Hamish is right a classic supply-side crunch is heading towards the tin market, and therell be no way round it, as substitution for tin by other metals in its primary solder market is very difficult. Tin is very hard to substitute, Hamish said. What you need is a metal which is inert, non-toxic, and something with a low melting point. Given that tin replaced lead in solder for health reasons there is no going back to lead, and that really leaves only the precious metals as a substitute, though it is hard to imagine gold, silver or platinum being used as solder...."


Maybe this helped the jump yesterday afternoon?!