186th Sydney Mining Club presents at 12:30pm on Thursday 6th March Brad-Marwood
Brad Marwood
Two power stories from the ASX ‘undergrowth’: Norm Gardner, MD of ‘hands-on’ Aussie NT iron miner Western Desert Resources Limited and another great Congo copper story from Brad Marwood, MD of Tiger Resources Limited
For its size and wealth, Australia has relatively few bulk commodity ports. But Western Desert Resources (ASX:WDR) is making a barnstorming run to put to work one of our least known – the port of Bing Bong on NT shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria. It will have its first quarter of production down when Norm Gardner presents. A hard working and fast moving contractor, Norm has delivered services across the North and is now having a crack at his own operation.
Apart from being one of the fastest projects to develop in Oz in recent decades, it is a big break for the development of our North, a fine piece of Aussie enterprise, and comes in at just a quarter of the infrastructure unit capex of a typical WA iron mine. Backed by Noble Group and Macquarie Bank, and Roper Bar is a new name on the mining map. Norm Gardner
Norm Gardner
Originally built for the Macarthur River mine, the Bing Bong bulk loading facility used barge loading to get out through the shallows, like the many smaller and highly cost effective bulk ports of Indonesia. It needed a future and with the help of the 165 km haul road built by WDR and exciting gas discoveries of Armor Energy nearby, this sleepy corner of our mighty North might really awaken. The initial iron resource isn’t vast but with strong exploration and upgrade options its future looks good.
In the second leg of the March presentation, Australian enterprise goes to the Congo with a Bill Turner-like twist to hear how Brad Marwood is driving the ASX’s fourth largest copper producer Tiger Resources (ASX:TGR). This big cat has pounced right across the DRC copper shipping a creditable 41,255 tonnes of copper-in-concentrate coming from its Kipoi Project in Katanga Province last year 2013.
With a Stage 2 SX/EW operation fully funded and in construction, cathode production is just around the corner and will creep it to 50,000tpa and an NPV increased to US$755m. Hope you are sitting down, the Internal Rate of Return is quoted for Stage 2 is 107%, and with more than $1 billion of copper contained in stockpiles, there will be no mining for the first two years of SX/EW.
With a market cap nudging $300m we will be hearing a lot more from Tiger Resources with its strong margin growth.
Another pair of true Sydney Mining Club growth stories, not to be missed!
