Thor Mining

Thor Mining (THR) is buying into Australia's Spring Hill gold project and accelerating developments at its Molyhill tungsten, molybdum and iron venture. Quoted Down Under and on AIM, the South Australia-based company has won regulatory approval for a staged earn-in to obtain 80% of Spring Hill in the country's Northern Territory, which old resource estimates saw as holding an indicated 274,000 oz of gold, with 2.345 grammes of gold per tonne of ore.

Mick Billing, Thor's executive chairman, was head of Western Desert Resources, the Australian concern which now owns Spring Hill and has a 6 to 7% holding in Thor, and he says he sees an opportunity to update and extend the project's resource estimate. Meanwhile Thor, which tapped the market the other day for £410,000 with a placing at 1.34p, has newly started drilling at Molyhill.

Billing says it hopes to produce an updated feasibility study for Molyhill by early October and enhance existing resource estimates. These show total estimated resources of 3.75m tonnes, at 0.19% molybdenum, 0.32% tungsten and 28% iron oxide, of which the measured component is 540,000 tonnes with 0.24% molybdenum, 0.33% tungsten and 29.4% iron oxide.

'By Christmas, we should be ready to go' at Molyhill, suggests Billing, who says 'parties in Asia' and elsewhere have expressed interest in potential offftake deals for the project's output. He says it will take A$40m to A$50m (£31.25m) to take Molyhill into production and says 'parties in Asia' have shown interest in participating. 

Thor Mining's volatile shares have traded between 4.18p and 0.8p over the past year and now stand at 1.33p. As long as Chinese demand for the products holds up, they might repay a bold, risk-friendly medium-term punt.