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Junior Exploration Sector

Why Arizona Mining executives want to cash out early from one of the world’s top 5 mining projects – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – June 19, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

In one of the largest mining deals this year, the board of directors of Arizona Mining Corp., which is developing a zinc, lead and silver mine near the U.S.-Mexico border, agreed to a $1.8 billion buyout by Australia’s South32 Ltd.

The all-cash bid of $6.20 per share represents a roughly 50 per cent premium on Arizona’s Friday’s trading price — which has hovered around $4 for most of the year. The Vancouver-based company’s stock surged 48 per cent to $6.13 on the news in Toronto on Monday. South32 was down 1.6 per cent in Sydney.

The deal comes as the prices of zinc, silver and lead have been sliding, while trade tensions mount, casting doubt on global economic growth.

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Australia’s South32 bids $1.3 billion for rest of Canada’s Arizona Mining – Staff (Reuters U.S. – June 17, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – Australia’s South32 Ltd has bid $1.3 billion to take full control of Arizona Mining, offering a hefty premium for the Toronto-listed firm which is developing zinc, lead, manganese and silver assets.

The offer of C$6.20 per share was pitched at a 50 percent premium to Arizona’s last close and implies a total equity value for Arizona Mining of $1.6 billion, South32 said in a statement. The Australian firm already holds a 17 percent stake in Arizona.

The directors of Arizona Mining, which owns the Hermosa Project in Arizona near the border with Mexico, unanimously recommended that shareholders vote in favor of the transaction, South32 said.

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Vale in deal with two Canadian companies to sell cobalt – by Nicole Mordant (Reuters U.S. – June 11, 2018)

https://www.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Brazil’s Vale on Monday unveiled a $690 million financing to expand a Canadian nickel mine, agreeing to sell unmined cobalt from Voisey’s Bay as a booming electric vehicle market propels demand for the critical battery ingredient.

Vale said it would sell cobalt mined after 2021 as a by-product from the mine in Canada’s northern Labrador region to Wheaton Precious Metals Corp and Cobalt 27 Capital Corp in a so-called stream financing deal.

The transaction is the world’s biggest cobalt stream to date, a form of alternative financing that allows an investor to make an upfront payment in exchange for future production at a discounted price.

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How technology has driven a stake through tradition of mining claims – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – June 5, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

Prospectors once tramped deep into the bush for months at a time, driving wooden stakes to stake their claim. Now they just click a mouse

TEMISKAMING SHORES — About two decades ago, Glenn McBride found himself in one of the most remote parts of northern Quebec. Surrounded by forests and marsh near the Davoust River, there were zero roads, zero towns and exactly zero development.

A fleet of 12 helicopters had dropped McBride and about 80 other men into the bush to whack a path through the thicket and swamps in one of the last great staking rushes in Quebec. Staking a claim is what it sounds like: gaining the exclusive right to explore for minerals on a defined plot of land. All Crown land, as well as some private land, can be staked for a fee.

For most of the past century, the staking process stayed pretty much unchanged. A person could stake land by driving four-foot-high squared-off posts into the ground at each corner of the desired plot, and then cutting a path through the trees to mark the claim’s boundaries.

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Northern Dynasty Sinks Along With First Quantum Alaska Deal – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – May 25, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. plummeted Friday after the collapse of a pact with First Quantum Minerals Ltd. to finance the controversial Pebble mining project in Alaska.

The two companies were unable to reach an agreement on a proposed deal disclosed in December, Northern Dynasty said Friday in a statement. The arrangement would have given a unit of First Quantum an option to earn a 50 percent interest in Pebble in return for $150 million paid over four years to fund permitting.

The project at one of the largest copper and gold deposits has been fraught for years. Effectively banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Barack Obama, shares of Northern Dynasty surged after Donald Trump’s election victory.

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Cobalt 27 announces first-ever streaming deal for battery metals – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – May 23, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

‘It brings immediate free cash flow into the business’ — to the tune of about $30M a year from Ramu’s cobalt and nickel

Toronto-based Cobalt 27 Capital Corp. on Tuesday announced it will pay $145 million for the right to the cobalt and nickel from the Ramu mine in Papua New Guinea, in what marks the first streaming deal of its kind in the battery metals space.

The company, which announced an US$80-million credit facility earlier this month and US$185 million in equity financing in March, said it will not take on any new debt for the deal — a sign of the market interest for companies with exposure to battery metals as automakers prepare to increase electric vehicle manufacturing.

“This completely transforms our company because it brings immediate free cash flow into the business,” said Anthony Milewski, chairman of Cobalt 27.

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Osisko builds critical mass in Quebec – by Trish Saywell (Northern Miner – May 17, 2018)

http://www.northernminer.com/

In the first five months of the year, Osisko Mining (TSX: OSK) released resource estimates for two projects in Quebec while keeping in step with an ambitious drill program that is the largest of its kind in Canada.

Earlier this month, Osisko unveiled its first resource estimate on its 100%-owned Windfall deposit, 115 km east of the town of Lebel-sur-Quevillon. Windfall is one of the highest-grade resource-stage gold projects in Canada.

The company outlined an indicated resources of 2.38 million tonnes grading 7.85 grams gold per tonne for 601,000 ounces of contained gold and inferred resources of 10.61 million tonnes grading 6.7 grams gold for 2.28 million oz. of gold, using a cut-off grade of 3 grams gold per tonne.

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Familial ties drive mining company: Manitou Gold president says it’s about keeping communities thriving – by Karen McKinley (Northern Ontario Business – May 18, 2018)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

For Pat Dubreuil, mining is personal. Especially when it comes to one project near his hometown of Dubreuilville, which his grandfather founded with his four brothers as a sawmill in 1961.

He wears many hats as a local businessman, but on May 15 he spoke as president of Manitou Gold, a junior mining company, giving an update on its Kenwest property, south of Dryden, and its Goudreau area properties and patents, east of Dubreuilville.

The latter project is special for him. They are untouched properties on the edge of significant past finds, which have great potential to rejuvenate the area’s economy.

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Dissident shareholders take control of Zenyatta Ventures – by Norm Tollinsky (Northern Ontario Business – May 18, 2018)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

A group of dissident shareholders of Zenyatta Ventures took control of the graphite junior mining company at a special meeting in Toronto May 11, turfing four of the six directors, including president Aubrey Eveleigh and executive chairman Keith Morrison.

Francis Dubé, Brian Bosse and Eric Wallman were elected to replace them. Everleigh resigned as CEO on April 17 but had remained with the company as interim president and director as Zenyatta began a search for his successor.

The Thunder Bay-based exploration company owns the high-purity Albany graphite project, west of Hearst.“For a group of dissident shareholders to band together and unseat extremely entrenched incumbents is rare to say the least,” commented one shareholder at the meeting.

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‘We’re right at peak gold’: All major deposits have been discovered, declares Goldcorp chairman – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – May 17, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

‘Are we not looking for it? Are we bad at finding it? Or have we found it all? My answer is we found it all’

Ian Telfer, chairman of Goldcorp Inc., is the latest industry magnate to predict the world has reached “peak gold,” saying that from here on out, mine production will continue to decline because all the major deposits have been discovered.

“If I could give one sentence about the gold mining business … it’s that in my life, gold produced from mines has gone up pretty steadily for 40 years,” said Telfer. “Well, either this year it starts to go down, or next year it starts to go down, or it’s already going down.”

“We’re right at peak gold here,” he added. Although gold prices sank two per cent to US$1,289.86 per ounce this week, sliding below the psychologically significant US$1,300 mark for the first time this year, Telfer said that day that he remained “bullish” and predicted gold prices would surpass US$1,500 or US$1,600 per ounce before the end of the year.

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Meteoric landing for Australian cobalt hunter: Junior miner does the groundwork to go drilling in the Cobalt camp – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – May 9, 2018)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Meteoric Resources, a western Australian cobalt explorer, is gaining ground in the cobalt country of northeastern Ontario.

The Perth-headquartered outfit has been on a staking binge this spring to enlarge its holdings and fast-track its exploration efforts. In early May, Meteoric grabbed more than 33-square-kilometres of prospective ground, about 40 kilometres northwest of the Town of Cobalt.

Dubbed the Beauchamp Cobalt Project, the company said the property “has all the right rock types combined with great geological structure, and we look forward to fast-tracking exploration at the property.”

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Drills confirming zinc at Pine Point – by Shane Lasley (North of 60 Mining News – May 10, 2018)

https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/

Osisko Metals Inc. May 8 said its winter drilling continues to confirm historical zinc mineralization at its newly acquired Pine Point zinc-lead project in Northwest Territories.

Located near the community of Hay River, the Pine Point project benefits from substantial infrastructure that includes road access, rail head in Hay River and hydro-electric power available on site. A preliminary economic assessment completed in 2015 examined several development scenarios and settled on a mining plan where 10 open-pit deposits are mined in sequence.

The deposits included in the mine plan host 25.8 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 2.9 percent zinc and 1.1 percent lead, plus 3.7 million metric tons of inferred resources averaging 2.9 percent zinc and 0.8 percent lead.

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Barrick makes small bet on junior with hope for big payoff – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – May 10, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Welcome to the era of the micro deal. In a transaction about as far away as one could imagine from the multibillion-dollar deals of the past great commodity boom, Barrick Gold Corp. is taking a tiny bet on a junior mining company.

On Wednesday, the world’s biggest gold producer announced a 19.9-per-cent investment in Vancouver-based Midas Gold Corp. worth US$38-million. Barrick is acquiring 46.5-million shares at $1.06 a share, a 9-per-cent premium to its Tuesday close.

It’s the latest example of a senior gold company making a so-called “strategic investment” in a junior, with the hope that it will eventually pay off in the form of much needed added production.

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Comparatively high exploration spending belies sagging discovery rate – S&P Global – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – May 3, 2018)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

ANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Despite exploration budgets remaining at comparatively high levels in the past decades, geologists have only been able to find a fraction of the gold ounces they discovered in the preceding 18-year period, a new analysis conducted by S&P Global Market Intelligence shows.

The financial information and analytics firm said that despite exploration budgets having declined from the ten-year peak in 2012 to $54.3-billion in the past decade – almost 60% higher when compared with the $32.2-billion spent on gold exploration in the preceding 18 years – only 215.5-million ounces of gold has been defined in 41 discoveries over the most recent ten years, compared with 1.73-billion ounces found in 222 discoveries in the preceding 18 years.

“We have shown in previous research into lead times for gold assets, that it takes about 20 years for an asset to advance from discovery to production.

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Canada stock market shutdown pushes investors to explore options – by John Tilak and Fergal Smith (Reuters Canada – April 30, 2018)

https://ca.reuters.com/

TORONTO (Reuters) – A rare outage at Canada’s major stock exchanges could dent the credibility of operator TMX Group Ltd (X.TO) and encourage investors to explore alternative trading channels, fund managers and traders told Reuters.

Canada’s stock market suffered a partial shutdown on Friday, forcing TMX to halt trading more than an hour early. TMX has since said the exchanges will resume trading on Monday after “internal technical issues” were resolved.

The outage sent investors to TMX competitors and exchanges in New York that listed Canadian companies, traders said. Some of Canada’s biggest companies – including the likes of Suncor Energy (SU.TO) (SU.N), Enbridge Inc (ENB.TO) (ENB.N) and Barrick Gold (ABX.TO) (ABX.N) – are listed both in Toronto and New York.

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