Thor Mining (ASX: THR, AIM: THR) is a minerals exploration and development company focused on gold and base metals exploration, as well as progressing towards development of the Molyhil Tungsten and Molybdenum Project in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Thor Mining’s hard work soon to pay off
Thor has been hard at it in 2011, keeping the drills turning in a way that has resulted in an increased proportion of finance getting to the exploration programs. A research report has concluded that the results of this labour will become apparent when the revised resource estimate is published.
Thor Mining (ASX: THR, AIM: THR) has recently been the subject of a research report by a UK broker, which concluded Thor has been a busy company with “more of everything” in 2011.
The following is an extract from the report.
Dual-listed Thor Mining (AIM, ASX: THR) has released its 2011 annual report.
Approaching the AGM we put forward this review of Thor’s progress this year. The best summary we can give is 2011 brought more of everything. More exploration, more investors, more fund raising and a higher proportion of those funds reaching the drill bit.
After a relatively slow 2010 and early 2011 (not just for Thor but reflected across the junior mining sector) the Australian exploration season saw some significant activity across Thor’s portfolio.
The greenfields exploration on the Dundas Project continues to provide more drill targets from shallow geochemical calcrete and soil sampling.
A little hiccup in the paper trail for Spring Hill was quickly resolved and Thor took ownership of more of the 80% option over the brownfields gold prospect. This paved the way for the drill to turn on the property and we look forward to first assays from the program in due course.
Molyhil Mine saw more drilling, both deeper and shallow step-out, which intercepted more mineralization and that can hopefully be converted to more mineable reserves which in turn would make the mine easier to finance and ultimately more profitable.
The first part of the re-worked DFS was released showing the revised CAPEX and OPEX estimates that will be used in the final report, expected in the very near future.
It’s been a hard year for many junior miners, especially so for those exploring for gold where the normal premium that gold explorers enjoy to the price of the metal became a penalty in Oct 2008.
The lag between metal price and equity price has grown so that gold equities are only worth around 80% of what they would have been worth had their historic correlation with the metal price held.
It seems that fear even stretches to gold proxies and that bullion under the bed is currently the order of the day.
The current situation will change and normal service will be resumed. Until then Thor has its thoroughly industrial, fundamentally driven tungsten/moly mine to advance and judging by its drill returns on 25 Oct & 28 Nov the extra exploration looks to have paid off with some of the highest grades of scheelite (WO3) and molybdenite (MoS2) seen on the project to date at 24.5% and 1.37% respectively.
These are high grades that, if even partially reflected in the new resource estimate, have the potential to significantly alter the life of mine economics.
More of Everything in 2011
More greenfields exploration on the Dundas project, first drilling at the brownfields Spring Hill Project, deeper and step-out drilling at Molyhil to support the re-worked DFS and still to come, a re-worked DFS and mineable reserve for Thor’s Northern Territory tungsten/molybdenum mine.
All this coupled with regular visits to market and to potential customers for Molyhil’s concentrate and Thor has been a busy company while the continuing financial whirlwind has most of us rushing for cover.
