We had a presentation on a zinc explorer called Alta Zinc (ASX:AZI) on Wednesday, which has an advanced project in Italy just up to the north, not far from Turin.
What I didn’t know was how much current mining activity there was up in that part of the world, given most people in WA associate that area with skiing.
That part of Italy is not well known in Australia, but I think there are 20 or 30 mines operating in the Lombardy/Piemonte region.
Alta’s Gorno project was mined many years ago, and there’s been a history of mining around there since the 1700s.
In fact, a lot of the areas are old hammer and tap mines from 200 or 300 years ago, but this project I think could get to somewhere between 7 and 8 million tonnes.
It’s a classic Mississippi Valley type (MVT) lead-zinc-silver deposit with very little modern exploration.
It produced about 6 million tonnes at 14.5 per cent zinc and lead. It can produce a very clean concentrate and there’s lots of options for smelters in Europe.
Alta currently has a resource of just under 3.5 million tonnes at about 4.9 per cent zinc, 1.3 per cent lead and about 27g/t silver. But I think that’ll go up. They’ve got a fairly aggressive plan to bring this project back into production in the next two years.
The company has a pretty experienced board. Geraint Harris is the mining engineer based in London. He’s ex-Lisheen in Ireland which is another lead-zinc MVT deposit.
Bob Annett, who was associated with Adriatic Metals (ASX:ADT) which had a great run, has come back out of retirement.
Alta has been a bit unloved by the market with zinc not being the most popular metal in the last two years, but I think that is turning around.
The company has about $4.5m in cash as of the end of September, about 3.6 billion shares on issue, and an enterprise value (EV) of around $14m (market cap + debt – cash) with no debt. There’s a little bit of an overhang from the options, which are a bit out of the money.
Kurs derzeit in Australien: 0,005AUD |
Thread abonnieren
