Bastion Minerals acquiring Canadian copper portfolio – but thanks to China, prices are sinking

Bastion Minerals (ASX:BMO) is the latest nanocap to get into copper, but its timing could be star-crossed.

The company is to pick up three “high-grade assets including the ICE copper-gold deposit … and Mariner and Harley copper projects.”

The company reported one historical drill hit of 20.56m @ 5.2% copper – eye-catching, to be sure – and a historical resource of 5Mt of ore at 1.5% copper.

There’s more than one issue. The first is that a competent person has not done any work on any of these metrics; Bastion was forced to lead with that observation in its announcement today.

That didn’t rattle Executive Chairman Ross Landles.

“These highly prospective high-grade Canadian Copper projects have the potential to be a game changer for Bastion and we are extremely proud to have added these projects to our portfolio,” Landles said.

There is another problem, however.

Since China’s Third Plenum was shown to be a total yawnfest nearly two weeks ago, copper prices have given up their YTD rally.

You may recall uranium came hot out the gate as we entered CY2024, and has since subdued below US$100/lb.

A similar story with copper: its yearly gains are now a paltry +1.38%, as of 9.40am Sydney time on Tuesday. The culprit is a struggling Chinese economy that quite clearly can’t stimulate itself no matter what it tries.

If you haven’t seen one lately, it’s worth checking out the copper price chart.

BMO last traded at 0.8cps.