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https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/CCZ/02596939.pdf

Market halt in Oz. Big news coming. Expect fireworks today if still trading in London.

Very promising...
https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/CCZ/02580928.pdf
Assays due in coming weeks.

10% increase on ASX overnight. Now trading at 1.2p. A lot of chatter on Hot Copper forum, mostly nonsense but at least it shows the stock is attracting interest. Hopefully we can get some momentum. Not many opportunities in the current market so we may get some attention in the coming weeks.

Nonsense, nobody is buying from Itaconix in sterling.

https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/CCZ/02552915.pdf

https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/CCZ/02551118.pdf

But still no news on Big One. Very frustrating.

My 2p average is looking a long way off. I'd imagine a lot of us bought in on the 'copper is the future' hype that followed the Covid lockdown. The world looks a very different place now as everyone turns bearish on the world economy. I've got a five year time horizon until retirement so plenty of time for a turnaround in sentiment, I have to remind myself of that on days like this.

CCZ still have about AUD$7m (GBP£4m) cash which should take us well into 2023. Just as well because raising cash in the current climate could be difficult. Hyperion intend to IPO later this year! Good luck with that.

Generally I'm still bullish about the future of the company but management need to be better this year, Mt Isa must be the priority with no more distractions chasing the latest 'flavour of the month' metal. They also need to pick up the pace. The entirety of last years' drilling season was taken up at Big One and as a result Arya was a bit of an expensive rush job with nowhere near the drill depth originally planned. A lot of this is down to the previous CEO so I was encouraged to see the BOD act quickly to terminate his contract. Will current management be any better?

We are still waiting for assays from Ayra! Are they are so poor that management now deem them not worth publishing? I notice CCZ play down the importance of the electro-magnetic anomaly in the Strategic Update earlier this month; originally thought to be a copper deposit, now being referred to as a 'graphite discovery'.

Drilling at the Big One still hasn't started as we wait for the drilling season to begin. Interestingly, drilling began in mid-June last year so news can't be far off. I'm still hopeful on Big One but whereas last year it looked like one od several irons in the fire, now it looks like a 'must win'.

https://uk.yahoo.com/finance/news/metals-haven-t-crashed-hard-074805643.html

https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/CCZ/02533823.pdf

Looks like a good deal to me. Zambia could have been a distraction and I'd prefer to stick with the Australian licences. Meanwhile we retain 25% of Hyperion which includes their gold mining in Burkina Fasso. This provides further diversification of assets and a partner more suited to working in Africa.

It was the 17th November last year, over 5 months ago, and we are still waiting on assay results from Arya. I understand lab work is taking longer due to Covid delays but even at the height of the pandemic, assay results were taking no longer than 4 months. At one point Arya was the flagship project, with talk of a huge electromagnetic anomaly and the potential to propel the company to mid-tier miner status.

November’s RNS was ambiguous to say the least, it appeared the anomaly may just be a giant lump of graphite, although portable XRF readings did detect 1 - 3% base metal sulphides and the company stated “All samples have been sent to the laboratory for further analysis, with a specific request to test for all base / speciality metals” and went on the say “A comprehensive update will be released once the assays are returned and the geology team interprets all pertinent fundamentals”.

Since then we have heard nothing! So what’s the story? Is it really taking the laboratory this long to release results? Is Arya no longer a priority? Or have the results been so disappointing that Arya is now mothballed? Whatever the reason, investors have a right to know. Drilling at Arya was eye-wateringly expensive , the cost/reward profile of Arya affects, to a significant degree, the investment case for this company. It is concerning that we have heard very little an update would be welcome.

Does anybody know who is behind the class action lawsuit? It seems to have come out of the blue with very little support from PIs on this or the Canadian boards. I feel something sinister is at play i.e. is someone deliberately trying to scupper the chances of raising funds by throwing this spanner in the works? Certainly it makes it more difficult to raise funds with a lawsuit hanging over the company.

I sold up about a month ago. I'm not convinced this is a good bet in today's economy. With the prospect of increasing inflation, one generally looks for companies that can most easily pass on rising input costs to their customer. Food ingredient companies can do this because they trade in a basic essential of everyday life. High end luxury brands can do it because their customers are relatively immune to rising prices.

The problem for FOUR is that their trade in 'promotional whatnots' is highly discretionary and ultimately given away free to the end user. The increasing cost to FOUR of purchasing these knick knacks will be difficult to pass on. I dare say many of these trinkets are sourced in China where Covid related supply issues persist and an increasingly strained trading relationship is likely.

I'm not predicting a massive drop in share price and I still believe management run the company well. However, as an investor, I need to believe in an underlying economic trend which can drive performance beyond other sectors of the market. I'm struggling to see that with this company at this time.

Can't buy any quantity this morning, everything goes to NT even though market makers must be holding loads of this stock at the moment.

Re. Pt & Au. It's only surface rock chip samples so not getting too excited at the moment. However, it shows the potential of BHA to be more than just cobalt. Pt & Au is of course well worth further exploration, 12% copper from a single rock chip also interesting. Nothing that's going to move the share price at the moment but another piece to the jigsaw at BHA.

To be fair, the $2.4m was for Q4 2021 which covered the cost for Arya and much of the 2020 drilling campaign at Big One. I'd expect expenditure this quarter to be minimal and I'd be surprised if drilling costs for the whole of 2022 are significantly higher than was spent in 2021 given the plans they have outlined.

My estimation for costs in 2022 are as follows...

Operating Activities $1.2m (in line with previous years' expenditure)
Exploration & Investment Activities $2.7m (in line with full year expenditure up to June 21)
Exploration above previous years activity* $2.5m (this assumes similar expenditure in Q4)

* Note, I'm assuming exploration costs for the 12 months of 2022 will equal the 18 month exploration costs for the period June 2020 to Dec 2021. In fact I don't see anything in the company's plans to suggest a 50% ramp up on exploration activity but I have erred on the side of caution.

Based on these guesstimates, the company have enough cash for 2022 expenditure. I don't think we can rely on other sources of funds such as options or IPO for Broken Hill so a cash raise in early/mid 2023 is likely in my estimation. I'm not too concerned with this time frame as regular fund raising is to be expected for a junior miner.

One concern is whether the results from the upcoming drilling campaign translate into a higher share price and therefore less dilution when the time comes for fund raising. To be fair this could be said for any junior miner.

However, a greater concern is the lack of faith in management. Given the amount spent on exploration in the previous 18 months, our return for that investment seems meagre. Big One still requires further in-fill drilling to increase the confidence in the recently issues JORC and the handful of very shallow drills at Arya has barely scratched the surface. We are a little further along than we were 18 months ago but not enough to justify the cash spent.

I'm still hopeful that the northern anomaly at Big One will add significantly to the resource and there's always the possibility that Cangai will spring into life with a joint venture. Arya is anybody's guess at the moment and BHA is a dead rubber, although to be fair the company have wisely decided to not commit too much cash on BHA.

Finally some good news. Looks like they will apply for a mining licence. Very promising and frankly relieved as I was worried. Also, open to north east and down dip; so resource can only get bigger on further exploration. If the northern anomaly is also found to contain copper, then we are talking multiples of the current JORC estimate.

Confirmation that oxide mineralisation can be processed in the vicinity and that the ore body commences from the surface is a welcome reminder that Big One could possibly be developed without the need for a partner?

Cangai gets another mention, interesting.

Overall this is great news and yet the Australian market hasn't reacted. Could be an opportunity to top up tomorrow morning.

I hope you are right CopperOn but we are not talking here about the West Zone which neighbours Cobalt Blue licence. Cobalt is present only in the East Zone which is 40 to 50 km away. As the latest RNS states, "Elsewhere in the tenure cobalt is seldom greater than 100 ppm".

Even within the East Zone, there is a relatively small "defined target area" (Figure 1, RNS 14/2/22) where cobalt occurs "within certain parts of the target area". Data for Line 1800 E is included in the RNS (presumably because this is the very best data they have) but while levels are described as 200 ppm to 2,500ppm; it can be seen from Figure 2 that only a very narrow band gave a reading for 2,500 ppm and all other readings were 200 ppm or less/non-existent.

So I shall stick with my expectation that the full analysis will reveal isolated cobalt zones of around 200 ppm. Unfortunately, we have seen from Big One, that Castillo have a habit of throwing out big numbers from 1 meter intercepts which give very distorted views of the overall resource. Certainly there is nothing in the latest RNS to suggest this resource is in any way comparable to Cobalt Blue.

My take on BHA is that the availability of QAQC compliant data from historical drills, combined with the inclusion of BHA in the NSW government’s critical minerals policy, has presented Castillo with an opportunity to model a JORC resource. It's a 'no brainer' given that work at Mt Isa is on hold for the raining season. But just because something is easy/convenient to do, doesn't make it an exciting project. If they can garner enough interest in an IPO for a few million then it's worth doing but I don't see BHA as a company maker.

Cobalt prices are on the up at the moment but historically very volatile and this could present a significant barrier to a successful IPO. Also, Cobalt is usually a by-product of copper or nickel mining so there are many existing sources around the world as well as tailings which could be processed at economically attractive rates. In short, Cobalt isn't all that exciting and at 200 ppm, even less so.

On the other hand the resource at BHA is shallow and while 200 ppm is low in historical terms, the world is changing very quickly and BHA may become commercially interesting in a new "cold war" world; but I'm not holding my breath.

I think the next significant news will be assays from Arya which were submitted on first week of December. It seems assay work is taking around 4 months to complete at the moment so we could hear something from mid-March onward.

The historical data from BHA should now have been digitised and interpretation underway but as the stated intention is to re-analyse the RC and diamond drill cores, I assume this will be another 4 month wait? If correct, any update in the next few weeks will be the usual nothing burger.

News from Zambia may not have much impact on share price. The IP survey at Luanshya is complete and the drill targets identified but my understanding is that they will work with a drilling partner and that could take some time to arrange. We're still waiting on the IP survey from Mkushi Project and this could drop any day, but unlikely to move share price judging from previous IP survey announcements.

The way I see it, we should get the Arya assays next month then a series of drilling updates throughout the summer, mostly concerning Mt Isa projects (Big One and Arya) then hopefully a busy news period in the second half of the year with JORC on BHA, assays from Mt Isa and maybe even a JORC for Big One.

In my opinion, Cangai and Zambia are a sideshow this year. Maybe 2023 will be all about Zambia. At some stage we need something to excite the market and my guess is that the northern anomaly at Big One is our best chance of getting the share price moving. I haven't given up on Arya yet but it will take more than graphite to get the market interested. Cobalt at BHA seems very thinly spread and will require a partner with deep pockets, JORC is the first step but who's gonna get out of bed for 200 ppm Cobalt?

@APR I agree Cangai is an excellent resource and seems to be further progresses than the other licences. Cangai should normally be the main focus if it were not for the issues described in the document. In one sense this is all in the past as the necessary remediation work has been carried out and the regulator is satisfied. However, the company have created problems entirely of their own making and I am sure this is the reason for a lot of the negative sentiment on the HotCopper forum. Regarding the environmentalist, it is like kicking a hornets nest; they can cause a lot of noise and fuss, not all of their criticism needs to be relevant. Jensen is an ex politician, maybe he thinks he can smooth things over but as you said, he will need to bring his A-Game.

Here is some background on the environmental issues surrounding Cangai...

http://www.cec.org.au/local/TheCangaiCopperMineSaga.pdf

The document is rather long but the blue text on page three is the official statement from the regulator regarding the suspension of the Cangai licence.

Castillo Copper certainly did not cover themselves in glory. However, remediation work was carried out as ordered by the regulator and Castillo released the following...

https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/CCZ/02109978.pdf

While the Regulator may now be satisfied, it's unlikely that the local environmental group will just roll over. Normally I would try to balance the concerns of local environmentalists with the need for responsible mining however, in this case, it must be said that Castillo have really behaved poorly.

I cannot see the local group giving up their opposition having already achieved some success. It will be interesting to see what happens with Cangai but I'm not pinning too much hope on progress. It's a great pity and it demonstrates how poor management at the outset has probably destroyed this promising opportunity.