Quebec exploration showI went to the conference sponsored by MDN. The speaker was John Kaiser who speaks on the gold trend, the base metals and talked about rare earth minerals. It was very interesting.The most interesting part for me was the trend of the juniors where he put some charts and saying that juniors are far behind the parade right now...because nobody without the gold bugs are in this market yet and the ones in are sceptical and like any bull market in its infancy, it has to climb a wall of worry. So for him, we are in a sweet spot and must be patient.
I saw Marc Boisvert but did not have the time to talk with him.. For the scoping study, the difficulty is that Metchem who conducts the study had not all the metrics to achieve the study when they were mandated to do it because there is very few comparable in the world i.e. mining both Niobium and Tantalum. MDN could get this information late last month by an another producer. It's the same with the bulk sample. This complexity delays the results. We're in Canada and the study has to be done in a rigourous manner. So let wait and see.
I met Mr. Bureau and Duchesne from MCI.What Mr. Bureau told me, is that the Anita project will give stable revenues to MDN on a long range of time. This mine will get a minimum of 20 years of exploitation. When we look at Niobec, it's been running since 1976 and the reserves had been upgraded during the life of the mine. For the Niobium, there is no matter. Why it's so important to separate the tantalum, it's because you'll get a better price and the market is larger. Mr. Duchesne who is a shareholder of MCI and a metallurgist explained it to me. So the complexity comes from the separation of the tantalum. In the second phase of the project, experts will dig this aspect to come with the better solution available.
So, for the Anita project 2 weeks or 2 months won't make a big difference. The deposit will be there and nobody can rob it.
The exploration on Ikungu is on his way, that 's all I could get at the conference because I was late.
Pierre013