PURE SPECULATION: Robin Bromby From: The Australian January 18, 2010 12:00AM
DAVID McSweeney has been a gold miner and then successfully took Gindalbie Metals (GBG) into iron ore. Now it's base metals that float his boat and his Avalon Minerals (AVI) has reported high-grade copper hits at the Viscaria project in Sweden. McSweeney's aim is to make Avalon the next Western Areas (WSA) -- only with copper as the basis for a mid-tier miner rather than nickel. By coincidence, both companies have founded their strategy on old mines abandoned by Finnish metals giant Outokumpu. (WSA picked up the Flying Fox nickel mine in Western Australia from the Finns.)
Avalon's copper was discovered in the 1970s by Sweden's iron ore giant LKAB on the hill above its huge Kiruna underground mine. The copper operation was taken over by Outokumpu, which closed the mine in 1997.
Only one of the three parallel copper ore zones has been mined and now Avalon says it has found a new zinc zone. McSweeney's plan is to start copper production from existing resources to get cashflow and then develop the other zones.
Sweden is also proving a good hunting ground for Golden Rim Resources (GMR) and Drake Resources (DRK). Drilling near the old Falun copper mine (which operated for 900 years until it closed in 1992) has produced high-grade gold assays along with copper and bismuth.
We would have liked to update you on what is happening to the delayed Scandinavian Resources (SCR) float. One theory is that it might be the greenfields nature of the projects in Sweden and Norway that is deterring investors. Each time we called chairman Damian Hicks, he was "in a meeting" and he never got back to Pure Speculation. C'mon Damian; we won't bite.
SCR Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
