A junior resource company’s place in the food chain is to acquire projects, make discoveries and hopefully advance them to the point when a larger mining company takes it over. Discoveries won’t be made if juniors don’t have boots on the ground, if they aren’t out in the bush poking around and breaking rocks.
Few exploration companies have the money or technical expertise to “go mining”. For many, the goal is to find a deposit that’s good enough to attract a major who will acquire the asset. Another pathway is for the junior to partner with a larger company. An option or joint venture (JV) agreement is a way for juniors to gain access to the financial and technical resources needed to build the mine.
Juniors are extremely important to major mining companies because they are the firms finding the deposits that will become the next mines. In this way, juniors help the majors to replace the ore that they are constantly depleting in their operating mines. Put another way, juniors find the resources for majors to turn into mineable reserves.
For the rest of this article: https://www.mining.com/metals-security-of-supply-depends-on-junior-resource-companies/