Ursa update.Spent the day yesterday up at the Shakespeare mine with RS and Gus. My first impression of the mine site was, WOW. When you actually stand on the mine site, you realize how far Ursa has come in the past few years. From what was a piece of wilderness, Ursa have carved out a fully functioning mine. They have built an 8 km, all weather road . There is a weigh scales now installed and an area is being cleared to construct a future mill. At the actual mine, they have a primary crusher that breaks down the ore to a 6' diameter and will soon have a secondary crusher that will break the 6" ore down to 1' ( which is what Xstrata want ). The sedimentation pond has been completed and is impressive in construction and size. At the mine , holes ( 5 1/2" ) are drilled into the rock, blasted and the blasted rock is loaded by front end loaders into the primary crusher.The ore is crushed and then loaded onto trucks and taken to the Strathcona mill. It is a very straightforward and simple operation. They have a stockpile of approx. 2,500 tonnes of ore, in case the crusher breaks down, trucking can still continue. The whole mine site is very clean and organized, safety is very much emphasized. They have a stellar safety record, over 1000 injury free day's. Xstrata is very happy with the ore from Shakespeare, although it is a lower grade, it is very consistent. The Shakespeare mine is the only nickel mine in the Sudbury area that is open pit. Ursa still think they will do 180,000 tonnes this year. For the first 6 months, they have shipped 63,115 tonnes to Xstrata. In order to do 180,000 tonnes this year, they will have to do a lot more than 500 tonnes a day. Does not take a genius to figure out that we can expect Ursa to announce at some point that they are shipping more than 500 t/d to Strathcona. Ursa have a very good working relationship with Xstrata.There is a lot of room for expansion at the mine. At the moment, they are blasting the west zone, the smaller one. The east zone is far bigger. Now, factor in the fact that Ursa have other properties, Shining Tree, Worthing Bell, Baldwin Porter and the newest acquisition, the Nickel Offsets property. They also own 6 million shares in Patricia Mining and 5 million share in Nyah. they are debt free and are one of the few juniors that are actually making money. With a market cap of approx. $5 million, this has to be one of the most undervalued plays on the TSX. The big question is the price of nickel. If it drops much lower, Ursa will not be making much money ( but then again, not too many producers will be either ) . Energy prices are dropping, which will help. If the CDN$ stays down around the low .90's and nickel prices firm up a little, buyers today will be very happy. I'm still buying.
I'll try to post some photos over the weekend of the mine.