Great read on CTM on summary from RRS.I would suggest an...

Great read on CTM on summary from RRS.I would suggest an exciting few months ahead!!!
Centaurus Metals
Brazil specialist and Centaurus (CTM) managing director Darren Gordon is a decent sort of bloke so he was never going to make much of what Vale’s January 25 tailings dam disaster might mean for those with iron ore interests in the country.

Nowadays, the focus for Centaurus is very much on the big-time potential of its nickel-cobalt and copper-gold prospects in Brazil’s fabled Carajas mineral province.

But Brazil was originally an iron ore play for Centaurus and it still owns the development-ready Jambreiro project in Minas Gerais state, also home to Vale’s tragically deadly Brumadinho operations.

Jambreiro has all been dressed up and ready to go for years. It has its mining licence and environmental approvals in place for a 3mtpa operation from an initial 18 million-tonne reserve of high-grade, low impurity material for supply to the local steel mills.

More to the point is that back in 2013, Jambreiro was the subject of a bankable feasibility study that arrived at a net present value of about $100m. Iron ore prices were in the doldrums at the time and the required financing for a development proved to be a bridge too far.

But it is a different story today. Plug in current domestic iron ore prices and that NPV in the 2013 BFS would probably be 20-25% higher.

Domestic iron ore price strength is due in part to the strong demand for premium product, as well as the hit to supplies flowing from the response of mine closures and suspensions where “upstream’’ dams like that at Brumadinho are put under the microscope.

As mentioned earlier, Gordon is not waving his hands in the air about Jambreiro’s new appeal in the higher iron ore price environment, whatever the cause.

But when it is remembered that Centaurus is a 0.7c stock for a market cap of $16m, the ballooning NPV of Jambreiro is hard to ignore, particularly as any development would employ the much more acceptable “downstream’’ tailings dam model.

From all that, it can be argued that there is nothing in the Centaurus share price for its projects up in the Carajas – the free-carried Itapitanga nickel-cobalt project, and the Salobo West copper-gold project.

The lead partner in Itapitanga, the battery metals specialist Simulus Group, is working on delivering a bankable feasibility study into a development next year while a maiden drilling program at Salobo West (it’s west of Vale’s Salobo mine which is being expanded to 250,000 tpa of copper) is due to kick off next quarter.