Montezuma Mining's manganese exploration may offer greatest upside
by Minc Trading c
proactiveinvestors.com.au
When a small exploration company like Montezuma Mining (ASX: MZM) has about half of its total market capitalization in cash in the bank, the challenge then becomes how to deploy this cash to maximise the future potential return for shareholders.
Price: 0.27
Market Cap: $12m
Code: MZM
Listing: ASX
52 week High: 0.34
52 week Low: 0.062
Fortunately for Montezuma mining they have a number of very good drill targets covering three separate tenements prospective for gold, copper and manganese on which to focus their resources.
The company's gold tenement at Peak Hill is along the same channel from Sandfire Resources' (ASX: SFR) Degrussa deposit and with minimal drilling having taken place, the company is currently drilling with an objective of proving up a resource above 500,000 ounces Au to establish future gold mining operations.
The Butcher Bird deposit in Western Australia’s Pilbara has potential high grade copper formations which are undergoing further geophysical surveys to further establish the nature of the potential deposit.
However it is the manganese potential on this deposit that present perhaps the most exciting prong in the company’s armory at this time.
Using historic information from drilling undertaken by Alcoa the company collated the following data.
- Historic bulk sampling data enhances the potential for Butcher Bird to yield high grade DSO manganese ore.
Drilling by Alcoa intersected 102m @ 8.3% Mn including:
- 26m @ 7.1% Mn, from 0m
- 42m @ 10.3% Mn, from 34m
- 14m @ 11.2% Mn, from 82m.
Data supports a model of high tonnage, low to medium grade beneficiable manganese ore. Alcoa drilling also intersected 6m @ 0.62% copper from 176m.
Montezuma has announced that a review of historic data recently acquired from the WAMEX archives has highlighted the potential for large tonnage, potentially basin scale manganese mineralisation within E52/2350.
In 1982, Alcoa of Australia Ltd drilled a vertical, 350m deep diamond hole in the central northern part of the licence, testing for Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide (“VMS”) style mineralisation. This drill hole returned a number of potentially significant manganese intercepts, with the drill logs indicating that the manganese occurs in flat lying siltstone, mudstones and shales as hard bands within the surrounding bedrock.
Subsequent to this work, in 2003 Pilbara Manganese Pty Ltd undertook trenching in 4 locations, two on Bindi Bindi Hill, one near the Alcoa drill hole, and one at Cadgies Well.
Bulk sampling was undertaken on material from the northern end of the larger trench on Bindi Bindi Hill. The material weighed 4.8 tonnes, and was sieved through 16mm screens. The screened material comprised botryoidal slabs of manganese or lump, which averaged 40.7% Mn. Further channel sampling from the trench recorded an average of 40.05% Mn after being sieved through 16mm mesh.
The “lump” component of the material represents approximately 20% of the entire mass of rock and the results provide favourable indications that the generally low bulk grades can be mechanically upgraded to produce high grade DSO equivalent material.
Now if further drilling can expand any of these resources into an economically viable proposition the $6 million currently in the bank could be considered money well spent. |
