Amur Minerals CEO Robin Young: Flangovy drilling continues, shows promise

It is Amur Mineral’s CEO himself who said that the initial and secondary drilling at the Maly Kurumon/Flangovy Block — a high-grade nickel and copper-abundant area in the company’s Kun-Manie Reserve — is exceeding company expectations. Recent discoveries showed that there are more to the initially recorded 219,000 tonnes of nickel and 58,000 tonnes of copper in the reserve.

“ All along our drill sections [on the Flangovy zone], every section that we’ve drilled across this thing, we’ve basically got a hole in every one of them that has an intersect of mineralisation that exceeds 40 metres and some places it’s even up to 60 percent so it’s really persistent, impressive and continuous zone,” Young told Director’s Talk .

While the first drilling revealed that the Flangovy has more mineralised zone than previously reported, the second drilling confirmed that the area is replete with more visible sulphide mineral linked with nickel and copper mineralisation. Now, the company’s goal is to further its exploration in the area.

“The first hole (‘C306’) intersected three sulphide horizons containing a total of 46.6 metres of mineralisation averaging 0.8 percent nickel and 0.2 percent copper as determined by the in-house Niton XL2 500 X-Ray Fluorescence unit (‘RFA’). This extends the Flangovy area of the Maly Kurumkon / Flangovy deposit by 40 percent from its previously identified 850 metre length to that of 1,250 metres,” the company announced in a statement .

In 2014, the Amur Minerals ’s (London AIM: AMC) already-skyrocketing investor reputation intensified after it announced the presence of nickel and copper ore in the Flangovy. Amur, a smaller company compared to other nickel giants like Norilsk Nickel, started to become an investor favourite after economists announced that a supply deficit could happen after Indonesia implemented an unprocessed ore ban in January of last year. It also managed to maintain decent share prices on the London bourse after base metals first suffered from dismal market prices in the early quarters of this year.

Amur successfully obtained pre-production licence from the Russian government last May, and has chosen to conduct more infrastructure improvements on Kun-Manie instead of immediately extracting and selling its ore on the global market. The company is also currently focused on building smelting plants, as it could help them offer cheaper, high-quality ores to its clients in the future.

The Flangovy drilling has become a favourable strategy for the Russia-based nickel firm, especially now that the global demand for nickel and copper is substantially low. A lot of suppliers are now thinking of stockpiling their products and selling them when the right time comes, while others are still scouring the market for potential customers.

China, the biggest ore consumer in the world, is getting most of their supplies from the Philippines, a scenario that leaves suppliers from Australia and New Caledonia looking for substitute clients outside the Asia-Pacific region.

The good news is that the Flangovy expedition keeps on revealing outstanding figures, which excites investors and metal traders. According to Young, the company has now completed over 90 percent of its target 6,000 metre-drilling.

“We’re progressing very well at this point in time, we’re averaging a substantial drill rates, depending on the depth of the hole anywhere from 50 metres to 75 metres a day. At this point in time we’ve just released the results from about 1,500 metres of drilling, we have 2 holes that we’re running analysis on right now that, once those numbers are done, we’ll be able to report those as well,” he added.

The projected 90 million tonnes of ore that can be extracted from the Kun-Manie Reserve could help meet the demand segment should China resume to its old consumption habit, or if the Philippines run out of supply, which could possibly happen in the near future, as giant Filipino producers admitted in the past.

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