Australian Coverage

Good article on the weekend from Criterion. Seems to support the stock and has done so for a while. Outlook from here is looking pretty good in my opinion.

Aguia Resources (AGR.) 9.9c

Who is best to run a speculative resources venture: the rock-kicking dreamers or the hard money men?

Criterion isn’t rash enough to answer this one, but notes the experience of the Brazilian phosphate hopeful as it hones its case for developing its flagship Tres Estradas deposit in the south of the nation.

Unusually, Aguia is headed by “executive chairman and managing director” Justin Reid, who also moonlights as managing director of the Toronto-based private equity firm Sulliden Mining.

He is joined by Aguia executive chairman and Sulliden president Paul Pint. Sulliden is Aguia’s cornerstone holder with a 20 per cent stake. Under Reid and Pint, the board is applying what BHP supremo Andrew Mackenzie would dub a laser-like focus on its preliminary economic assessment.

The PEA confirmed the 70 million tonne Tres Estradas ground viable as a $US185m ($242m) project, based on annual output of 500,000 tonnes of the refined product single super phosphate (SSP). Reid is confident the capital cost can be slashed from the $US185 a tonne to around $US120.

One brainwave is including a side plant producing 600,000 tonnes of calcite, a lime byproduct that sells for $US47 a tonne. Another is reconsidering whether to produce SPP, as opposed to providing the unprocessed material (phosrock) at the mine gate.

Aguia last August raised $9.5m in a placement that brought in the world’s biggest resource fund, MMG.

Spec buy.