LOTTERY TICKET FOR 2010 - AMAZON MINING (V-AMZ)Highlights:
* 100 km long, 6 km wide
* Potash rock at surface to depths of 45 meters - no underground or in-situ mining req'd; fast to develop and cheap!
* No cash requirements
* Only 28 million shares outstanding, with no debt
* Partners include federal government, local communities, farmers, and a farm fund (Agrifirma) run by George Soros, Jim Rogers, and Don Coxe - https://ca.news.finance.yahoo.com/s/24112009/28/link-f-ccnmatthews-agrifirma-agrees-fund-trials-amazon-mining-s-thermopotash.html
* Brazil imports 95% of its Potash requirements...AMZ is located in the middle of Brazil's farmland....
* Brazil relies heavily on farming for their economy...1 in 3 people work in agriculture in Brazil
* Ability to start production by 2011 - at less than 200 million development costs (Saskatchewan is multi-billion).
* Would be the cheapest producer in the world
Pescod behind AMZ
"It was just a couple of weeks ago that we made our trip to Brazil and what an eyeopener that was! The country is booming. Take for instance a city like Belo Horizonte...which I had never heard of, it’s got 5 million people folks and yet you’ve never heard of it.
In a city like that you can see wheremuch of it is the one-story type of city you expect and then you find a new area where there are 40 skyscrapers built in just two years. Jobs are plentiful, the economy was not touched by the recent economic crisis and most important Brazil is becoming a powerhouse in agriculture.
It only makes sense because while American or British farmer gets one crop a year, with the climate in Brazil you can get up to two and a half crops a year in this area and industrial farming is just booming. Visit a dairy farm that has 750 cows where everything is known about those animals, from the computerized chips on their legs to the fact that for every 500meters they walk they lose a liter of milk production a day. The farm is going from 750 cows to 7500. Brazil is going to feed the world.
But Brazil is missing one big thing and that is because the constant rains leach the soils and they have to import 90%-95% of all the fertilizers they need. Today Amazon announces drilling results, coming up with 45 meters at 11.8% KTO from surface. This is no big surprise as when you tour the property, along it’s 100 km long and 6 km wide structure, you can see showings at surface everywhere. There is little doubt there’s lots of rock there.
What isn’t known yet is how the thermopotash process is going to work...it’s quite different from the traditional potash that is mined deep and expensively in Western Canada.
We catch up with Jed Richardson, COO, of Amazon, and he gives us a bit of a time frame of what to expect over the coming year. Drilling, he suggests, should continue until mid-January and there might be a crude idea of what kind of resource they may have by early February. A preliminary scoping study should be completed on their project by the end of the first quarter of next year.
But the big debate here is on the thermal potash and what kind of cost it is going to be to develop the fertilizer and what they’ll be able to charge for it. Small scale production of the potash should be applied to fields as early as February/March and by July/August the first crop should be giving them an idea of whether it is having the desired effect or not.
The reaction on the 4 month farming season on the soy and corn versus the immense eucalyptus plantations which tend to give you an idea a little bit sooner. Again you have to see the size of agriculture in Brazil to understand the importance of all of this, particularly when you pick up the other little tidbits such as most railways in Brazil are narrow gauged so if you are shipping fertilizers from the coast, it can be very expensive, and then you see the roads that are packed with trucks, so something local could be that important.
It is our nominee for the lottery ticket of the coming year. We feel that within six to eight month so you’ll know whether it is a lottery ticket like so many that are thrown away or cashed in for a nice reward."