Three companies have decent announcements out today with one unifying theme: geotechs have assessed the data, and these companies’ MREs are growing.
For the uninitiated, that’s a Mineral Resource Estimate – sometimes also simply referred to as a JORC, denoting simply the Australian legislation which regulates MREs (this journalist is a particularly bad offender for that.)
Increases to MREs ultimately give companies more opportunity to attract institutional and retail funding, by making the projects more bankable, on the whole – as long as there’s a high degree of confidence that what the company says is underground actually lies down there.
Investors tend to like big upgrades too, with upgrades often leading to increases in share price.
So, with JORCs on the brain – which companies have upgraded their estimates on Thursday?
Northern Star Resources
Northern Star (ASX:NST) has made the biggest upgrade today, with its Mineral Resources broadly now sitting at 61.3M ounces of gold (Moz) and ore reserves of 20.9Moz gold.
The gold mining giant is by far the largest company with such an announcement out on Thursday.
NST has increased its over all group resources by 4Moz after exploration successes and growth at Australian production centres.
Kalgoorlie operations saw estimates increase by no less than 12%; a maiden reserve was inked at Red Hill of 0.6Moz gold.
NST last traded at $14.43.
ABX Group
ABX Group (ASX:ABX) has upgraded the total amount of ore containing rare earth elements (REEs) on-site its project in northern Tasmania.
The junior explorer’s overall ore body has been increased by 70% to 89M tonnes – but that’s not 89Mt of REEs, just the dirt that contains them.
The company is using an average 844ppm grade of total rare earth oxides (TREO) “from 29% of the mineralised outline.)
The company believes its acreage boasts high concentrations of dysprosium and terbium, “averaging 4.3% of TRE and some blocks exceed 6%.”
ABX last traded at 6.1cps.
Toro Energy
We’ve had gold, we’ve had REEs, and now we’ve got the third hottest metal of the year (except for copper) – the nuclear energy feedstock uranium.
Toro Energy (ASX:TOE) has announced on Thursday that the stated uranium resource at its Dawson Hinkler deposit has increased by 115%.
All in all, Toro has grown out projected uranium yields to an eye-watering 20.3M pounds (Mlbs) of uranium.
What’s more, the company says the improved uranium price of recent history supports lower cut-off grades which may have hindered the company in the past. It is in this way – riding on the wings of commodity volatility – that Toro posts its 115% metric.
That cut-off grade is a mere 100pm.
(If that means nothing to you, I’ve written a big explainer on mining grades before for The Market Online here.)
TOE last traded at 46cps.