ROBERT Friedland's Ivanhoe Australia is attracting global attention, with confirmation its Queensland asset is the world's highest-grade molybdenum-rhenium deposit.
The Merlin Project has been described as one of the most significant discoveries in Australia, sparking comparisons with BHP Billiton's massive Olympic Dam mine.
"The Merlin resource estimate will provide Ivanhoe Australia with the potential to become the world's dominant and most reliable supplier of rhenium and position the company as a major molybdenum producer," chief executive Peter Reeve said.
Shares in Ivanhoe, which listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in August, jumped 29.66 per cent to $1.88 following the announcement.
Ivanhoe said the estimated 13 million tonne mineral resource had an in-ground metal value of about $6.4 billion, based on current spot metal prices. This equates to almost $500 per tonne of ore.
"As the picture of this remarkable deposit has emerged through our ongoing exploration, we have likened it to some of the earlier, great mineral discoveries in Australia, such as Western Mining's discovery of the Kambalda nickel field," Mr Reeve said.
"We believe the Merlin discovery will have that type of major corporate impact for our company."
Ivanhoe, 80percent-owned by Canada-based Ivanhoe Mines, has tenements covering 2250sqkm in the Mount Isa-Cloncurry mineral district in Queensland, including copper and gold discoveries.
Professor Murray Hitzman, the Fogarty Professor of Economic Geology at the Colorado School of Mines, who is overseeing an iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) research project at Cloncurry, said after a recent site visit that Merlin was a new type of molybdenum-rhenium deposit, with average grades an order of magnitude higher than the highest-grade existing molybdenum producers.
Rhenium is used in super-strength aerospace alloys. Molybdenum is a component of stainless steel and other alloys.
Professor Hitzman said the geophysics suggested a possible continuation of the Merlin system to the north.
"There is a major, untested magnetic anomaly at Flora East within and/or under the Mount Dore granite, 3km north of the northernmost drilling at Mount Dore-Merlin. This anomaly may well be the centre of a major IOCG system," he said.
In Australia, Olympic Dam is the largest IOCG, which is described as a "holy grail" for geologists.
At current spot prices, Merlin is equivalent to a gold deposit containing 6 million ounces of gold at a grade of 14 grams per tonne, or a copper deposit containing 1.1 million tonnes of copper at a grade of 8.5 per cent copper.
"It is unique in the sector," Mr Reeve said.
"I am getting all sorts of weird calls from geologists around the world saying they have never seen this in their life.
IVA Price at posting:
$1.84 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
