Companies: FND    HAWK    HZM    IEC    IMY    TIO    UMN   

With most metals bouncing back from recent weakness, market attention has been focusing on possible bids and deals – for example, the ‘preliminary discussions’ with an unnamed suitor that have caused hard-hit International Molybdenum to rally to 10.75p. David Bramhill, entrepreneurial ex-boss of Cambridge Mineral Resources, managed to raise £10 million at 25p for ambitious Utah-focused gas speculation and AIM newcomer Nighthawk Energy.

Aussie-based Finders Resources, at 26.25p, hopes to follow a £375,000 AIM placing with a much bigger funding Down Under. AIM-quoted Imperial Energy, recommended by Growth Company Investor in 2005 at 451.5p, has breached 1316p on increased Russian oil reserves and could go further, while progress in Namibia has lifted UraMin nearly 40 per cent to 250p since last month’s mention, leaving it still worth holding.

Aricom plans production
Jay Hambro, boss of Far East Russian-focused iron ore and titanium player Aricom, hopes to clinch a 70-30 debt/equity financing deal soon for the company’s Kuranakh project, which claimed a £50 million net present value before the latest iron ore price rises. Aricom, where Hambro’s father Peter and his associate Pavel Maslovsky are big investors, is a spin-off from fellow AIM miner Peter Hambro Mining. It hopes to start production at Kuranakh this year, boasting a five-year off-take deal with metal trader China National Gold Corporation.

The company claims potential iron ore reserves of more than 550 million tonnes at its Kimkanskoye and Sutarskoye deposit. Hambro suggests Aricom, which raised £90 million last year at 45p, could be producing six million tonnes a year for the Chinese market from 2010 after capital expenditure of £120 million.

Hambro claims another Aricom deposit, at Garinskoye, could hold 388 million tonnes of high-grade iron ore: he talks of direct, high-margin shipment targets of two million tonnes per year and implies even higher margins are possible for Aricom’s titanium sponge venture in the same region.

Clearly, some fundraising will be on the cards. But if Hambro’s projections are borne out, at 58p Aricom could outperform many peers.

Wide horizons at Horizonte
Ambitious Horizonte Minerals, backed by fellow AIM counter Minmet and chaired by Minmet director David Hall, hopes to wake up an unenthusiastic stock market soon with an in-house resource estimate for the company’s El Aguila silver, lead and zinc project in Peru. Sited in the mineral-rich Cero de Pasco district, one part of the project at Pacos Hill has shown intersections of more than 100 grams of silver per tonne of ore, as well as encouraging zinc values.

Horizonte – which raised £2.3 million at 30p when it floated last year – has spent £200,000 so far on Aguila, whose South Zone has shown two per cent zinc, ‘phenomenal’ silver grades and one gram per tonne of gold in places, according to chief executive Jeremy Martin. The company has defined ‘a significant gold anomaly’ at its 300 sq km Tangara project in Brazil, including 6.75 metres at 9.78 grams per tonne.

Horizonte is also looking at extensions of Tangara, Falcao and Rio Maria. The company has a joint venture with another company, Troy Resources, at Goias Velho.
Horizonte acquired its original projects via Hall from Minmet, which has a 17 per cent stake, as does local group MVR. The shares have fallen to 21.5p as the market fights shy of ‘blue sky’ ventures, though Martin says the strategy is to nurture projects until major mining groups show interest.

The shares have speculative recovery potential if the sector holds.