What the Analysts Say
WHAT THE ANALYSTS SAY: This week our team of experts run the ruler over Altech Chemicals and Impact Minerals.
Website: www.breakawayresearch.com
Altech Chemicals (ASX: ATC)
Altech Chemicals (ASX: ATC) has recently completed a Bankable Feasibility Study (BFS) on its proposed High Purity Alumina (HPA) specialty chemicals operation, and is now concentrating on permitting and sourcing funding for the estimated $100 million capital required to develop the project.
The BFS has returned very positive figures, indicating a robust, short payback project, with an NPV of around four times the expected upfront capital.
The BFS has also incorporated design changes as a result of ongoing optimisation and pilot scale metallurgical testwork, which has demonstrated the potential to produce a high quality 4N (99.99% Al2O3) HPA product.
Altech is an ASX-listed mineral and chemical processing company focused on the development of an HPA production operation, to enter into what is forecast as a rapidly growing market driven largely by the increased demand for HPA products from LED lighting and computer chip manufacturers and sapphire glass from electronics industries.
Altech owns significant aluminous clay resources in Western Australia, which it has demonstrated represents a suitable high quality, low impurity feedstock for the proposed HPA production process.
Plans are to mine and beneficiate the clay at Altech’s 100 per cent-owned Meckering deposit, some 130 kilometres east of Perth, and then ship the material for processing at the proposed HPA production plant at the Tanjung Langsat Industrial Complex in Johor, southern Malaysia.
Website: www.psl.com.au
Impact Minerals Limited (ASX: IPT)
Impact Minerals (ASX: IPT) has secured funding and technical support from cornerstone investor Squadron Resources (part of Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Group).
Squadron has agreed to invest up to $7.3 million to exploration. This welcomed capital injection, coupled with a recently completed $1.9 million Entitlement Issue, will allow systematic exploration to continue across all IPT’s projects, in particular at Broken Hill (IPT 87%) where the company recently announced some of the highest grade Platinum Group Metals drill results in Australia.
Follow-up drilling has commenced with results expected shortly. IPT also has the Commonwealth gold project in NSW and Mulga Tank nickel-copper project in WA, where drilling is expected to commence in the next Quarter.
High Grade Platinum Project Shows Significant Promise; Drilling Underway
The Broken Hill project has a 40km long belt of ultramafic rocks with numerous high-grade platinum occurrences at surface. The three priority targets are Red Hill, Platinum Springs and Moorkai.
Red Hill was a previous small copper-platinum mine which operated from 1906 to 1937. Drilling conducted by IPT under the historic mine returned minor massive sulphides from 58 metres with a drill hole of 32m at 1 per cent copper, 0.5 per cent nickel, 3.9 grams per tonne platinum-palladium-gold (Pt-Pd-Au) and 10.6g/t silver.
Drilling is currently underway to test seven targets at the Red Hill prospect.
A 120 kilogram sample from a gossan at Platinum Springs returned 19.6g/t platinum, 50g/t palladium and other associated PGM’s as well as nickel and copper. This is close to a mineralised drill hole.
Commonwealth Gold-Silver-Base Metal Project, NSW (IPT 100%)
The Commonwealth project is a high-grade gold-VMS project with potential for small-scale early production.
The project is located approximately 100km north of Orange in NSW and is situated in the prolific Lachlan fold belt.
In early 2015, IPT released a maiden Inferred Mineral Resource of 720,000 tonnes at 2.8g/t gold, 48g/t silver, 1.5 per cent zinc, 0.6 per cent lead and 0.1 per cent copper.
Further drilling is planned for early 2016 which will target potential extensions to the mineralisation.
Mulga Tank Nickel-Copper Project
IPT is targeting very large nickel deposits (e.g. Mt Keith, Perseverance) at its Mulga Tank project, 200km east of Kalgoorlie.
The area is highly underexplored with four of six targets tested by IPT returning high-grade nickel and copper in komatiites, veins and dunite. Further drilling is planned in the December Q 2015.
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