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The Mozambique-focused company is up a whopping 526.98 percent year-to-date, and Tuesday’s results are certainly part of the reason why.
“Flag of Mozambique” by User: Nightstallion – From the Open Clip Art website. Via Wikimedia Commons.
When Graphite Investing News (GIN) last checked in with Australia-based Triton Minerals (ASX:TON), the company was in the midst of releasing a slew of drill results from the Nicanda Hill deposit at its Mozambique-based Balama North project.
At the time, Brad Boyle, the company’s managing director, commented, “early indications show that [Nicanda Hill] could be one of the largest graphite deposits in the world, if not the largest.” That’s certainly an impressive claim, but Tuesday’s release of a JORC mineral resource estimate for Nicanda Hill reveals that it’s now the world’s largest-known combined graphite-vanadium deposit.
Specifically, Nicanda Hill’s mineral resource, which took just six months to complete, sits at 1.457 billion tonnes at an average grade of 10.7-percent total graphitic carbon (TGC) and 0.27-percent V2O5 containing 155.9 million tonnes of graphite and 3.93 million tonnes of V2O5.
The overall mineral resource is divided up into an indicated mineral resource of 328 million tonnes at 11-percent TGC and 0.26-percent V2O5, along with an inferred mineral resource of 1,129 million tonnes at 10.6-percent TGC and 0.27-percent V2O5.
Commenting positively on the news, Boyle said in Tuesday’s press release that drilling data received to date from Nicanda Hill confirms the deposit’s “geological continuity,” while “the consistency of the graphite grades” was key to the rapid completion of the mineral resource estimate. “This impressive result has confirmed the true world class potential of the Balama North project. Triton is now one step closer to becoming a market-leading low-cost graphite and potential vanadium producer,” he added.
Investors certainly seem to agree with Boyle’s assessment. Triton closed Tuesday at AU$0.41, but earlier in the day rose as high as $0.53. That’s an impressive 85-percent gain from $0.285 prior to a trading halt last week. Overall, the company is up a whopping 526.98 percent year-to-date.
The big question now, of course, is what’s next for the company. Putting out the mineral resource estimate for Nicanda Hill was a major priority for Triton this year, and it would be understandable if the company decided to take a bit of a breather. That however, looks unlikely to happen. The company said Tuesday that it “will now look in the near future to become a market leader and one of the lowest cost graphite and vanadium producers in the world.”
One of the first steps in that direction will be completing a scoping study on Nicanda Hill. With that in hand, the company will be “well positioned to apply for a mining concession at Nicanda Hill and continue to advance off-take discussions with various parties from Europe, China, Japan and North America.” Other activities being pursued — or soon to be pursued — by Triton include:
- Prefeasibility activities: The company has started both metallurgical and mineralogical studies.
- Definitive feasibility study: Triton is “liaising” with specialized mining consultants to get a definitive feasibility study on track.
- Pilot plant: The company plans to “undertake pilot plant production testing on large bulk samples.”
Of those, the offtake agreement seems to be one of the highest priorities. After all, as Boyle told GIN, “[y]ou need to have something in place before you push the next stage, which would be development. There’s no point spending a lot of money on development unless you’ve got somebody who’s guaranteed to go and buy it. You’re just wasting your money otherwise.”
Certainly lots for investors to consider moving forward.
Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
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