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Not quite a rocket, yet, but a year ago Bayhorse Silver (BHS.V) was very close to the end. While it had a silver mine, a mill and an ore sorter, it did not have a final permit which would allow it to actually operate its mine. In some jurisdictions, this would not have been a show stopper and the permit would arrive in short order. But the Bayhorse mine is in Oregon, a state where mining is politically unwelcome. The permit was going to take a while.
The metallurgical drill holes used at Iska Iska are larger diameter than the regular diamond drill exploration holes. For Eloro (ELO.T) and its CEO, Tom Larsen, this makes all the difference. “The more the better,” said Larsen in a telephone interview. “The Iska Iska minerals are mainly disseminated in stockworks and veinlets. A bulk sample is much more representative of the grades you will encounter when you mine the deposit.”
Eloro (ELO.T) CEO, Tom Larsen, has a huge job: he has to explain the geology and commercial potential of the Iska Iska project in Bolivia. An interview with Larsen needs to cover a lot of ground beginning with the market reaction to the company’s most recent news release.
Superficially, Cartier Silver (CFE.C) and Eloro Resources (ELO.T) look very similar. Same CEO, same management team, same geos, same tight share structure…silver in Bolivia! In fact, they are very different animals. Eloro’s Iska Iska deposit is a giant (over 670 million tons), silver plus tin plus zinc, polymetallic, project with complex geology and solid grades. Cartier’s Gonalbert property in the Chorrillos silver project is lower tonnage with but higher grades of silver-lead.
Denarius Metals (DSLV.V) is a vehicle for mining entrepreneur Serafino Iacono and his team as they moved on from GCM Mining as that company was absorbed by Aris Mining. A long time member of that team was Denarius CFO Mike Davies who I spoke with June 13.
Platinum, palladium, copper and nickel: critical metals for the transformative technologies which are powering Western economies. Clean Air Metals (AIR.V) is exploring two deposits, Current and Escape, near Thunder Bay which show great potential as sources for all four of these important metals.
A Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) is a significant milestone for junior exploration companies, essentially it promotes them into a select group of “valued asset” owners in the mining industry. It is a third-party assessment of the economic viability of the project’s resource estimates which a company has completed to date and it is an outline of the steps to be taken to reach commercial production.
One of the challenges in the junior resource exploration/development sector is attaching a credible net asset value to potential assets in the ground. A 43-101 resource estimate is helpful, so is a preliminary economic assessment; but neither really attaches a hard cash value to a company’s project.
