GRAPHITE ROUND UP. INTERESTING UPDATEDiamonds & Specialty Minerals Summary for Sept. 30, 2013 2013-09-30 19:01 ET - Market Summary
by Will Purcell
The diamond and specialty minerals stocks box score for Monday was a mediocre 47-67-136. The TSX Venture Exchange lost 11 points to 941 while polished diamond prices inched upward. Aubrey Eveleigh's
Zenyatta Ventures Inc. (ZEN) slipped 11 cents to $3.16 on 316,000 shares. Zenyatta, a 15-cent stock in mid-2012, has been slowly retreating since it surged to $5 in late July on the strength of a series of long, higher-grade graphite assays at Albany in Northern Ontario.
Terry Byberg and Gary Majerle's
Northcore Resources Inc. (NCR), down one-half cent to one-half cent on 454,000 shares, has fallen well short with its private placement. The company sold three million shares at one cent, raising $30,000 of the $125,000 it was after. Northcore wanted to pay bills and "maintain and preserve its existing properties, activities and assets" and it is not clear what will fall through the cracks. Mr. Majerle says Northcore is continuing its "tight cash management policy" but has decided to keep its Attawapiskat diamond play. The project operator and majority owner, Chuck Fipke's
Metalex Ventures Ltd. (MTX: $0.08), is disinclined to be a big spender on the project, so Northcore's maintaining and preserving should cost little. Mr. Majerle, chairman, has been in charge since Northcore shuffled management late last year after its former CEO, Francois Desrosiers, attempted to regain control. He got his way in part, although the regulators apparently balked at Mr. Desrosiers being involved with managing, or even helping to promote the company. In 2010, Mr. Desrosiers pled guilty to several charges involving stock distributions and unreported insider purchases while he was president of AntOro Resources Inc. and Northcore, then called Big Red Diamond Corp.
John Brydle's
Bluenose Gold Corp. (BN.H: $0.03) is acquiring an option on a graphite property immediately north of the
Zenyatta Ventures Ltd. (ZEN: $3.16) discovery at Albany. The 256-hectare property is appropriately if unimaginatively named Albany North, in keeping with Mr. Brydle's strategy of touting his new graphite plays on the back of Zenyatta's promotion. (Two months ago, Bluenose acquired its first 256-hectare property in the area, Zenyatta West. The company subsequently referred to the property as "West" and noted it was in no way connected to, or a part of, Zenyatta or its Albany graphite deposit -- suggesting Bluenose's me-too promotion had gotten a bit usurpative.) Bluenose has said nothing about West since August, when it touted a geophysical anomaly noted on old geophysics. Nevertheless, Mr. Brydle says targets in the area are "considered to be very prospective generally," although he also describes Zenyatta's find as a "very unique" deposit.
Michael England's
Caribou King Resources Ltd. (CKR) gained one-half cent to nine cents on 984,000 shares. The company has acquired another three claim blocks at Mulloy, 10 kilometres west of Zenyatta's Albany find. Like all the other promoters-come-lately to the district, Mr. England touts geophysical targets on his property, which now covers nearly 5,700 hectares. Mr. England says Caribou King has already applied for permits that would allow line cutting and drilling, but what he really needs is cash. Caribou King did sell 4.8 million 3.5-cent shares this summer, which will clear but a fraction of the company's June working capital deficiency of $420,000. Further, Mr. England recently hopped aboard a second graphite bandwagon, acquiring the Calumet property near the old Miller graphite mine, which is being actively promoted by Bruce Duncan's
Canada Carbon Inc. (CCB: $0.26).
Tracy Moore's
Canada Rare Earth Corp. (LL), up one cent to four cents on 257,000 shares, seems out to corner the market in rare earth refinery sites. The company agreed to invest $1.1-million to acquire a 15-per-cent interest in Angelo Viard's private VCS Mining Inc., which indirectly owns a 98-per-cent interest in a metals property in Haiti. As a part of the deal, VCS has agreed to lease 15 acres of land suitable for building a rare earth refinery, and will waive the first 25 years of lease payments. Mr. Viard says the agreement will enable Canada Rare Earth to build its proposed refinery that will process material derived from sources outside of Haiti. In summer, Mr. Moore said Canada Rare Earth was proceeding with its proposed purchase of 100 acres of land in Washington for $5-million. All that needed to be done he said, was permitting, negotiating contracts and proving his business case. From there, Canada Rare would "move to detailed design and construction of a refinery." There is no new news about the Washington site, so perhaps Mr. Moore has rethought his strategy, but in any case he is running out of time. Early this year Mr. Moore said his company would "commission the design and construction of a refinery in 2013 for completion in 2014.
Paul Gill's
Lomiko Metals Inc. (LMR) lost one cent to 5.5 cents on 101,000 shares after it and Graphene Laboratories Inc. "decided to reconsider" the terms of their "alliance agreement." In short, Lomiko will not be making the originally proposed investment of up to $2-million into Graphene because of market conditions and the effect of dilution at Lomiko's current price. Not to worry, Mr. Gill says the two companies will keep developing graphene products. The graphene and the products will apparently come from graphite mined at Lomiko's Quatre Milles project in Quebec, although a mine still seems far off 246758. A previous owner drilled 26 holes over 20 years ago and Lomiko drilled 23 more last year. The company said in March that a Phase II program would require another 50 holes to further test the property. It offered no timetable for the work and those words are conspicuously absent in the company's most recent quarterly report. More drilling would presumably allow Lomiko to calculate a graphite resource at Quatre Milles and perhaps begin a preliminary economic assessment.