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Brentharg; "If I do submit this Motion I will contact Danesh Varma, the FD and Juno boss, and seek his support."

Realistically, such a motion will not succeed without his support no matter what anyone else says, if they don't want to do it, it won't happen, no matter what "long suffering" shareholders want. Juno are by far the largest single shareholder in the company, and they are also owed £4m of debt by AYM, which they could call in at any time and basically bankrupt AYM unless it could raise the monies (probably heavily discounted) in equity. In effect, they have complete control.

calmtrader; "using current prices NPV of the 3 assets is £545m !!!"

Whilst that is the case, and arguably at current spot prices the NPV of these projects is north of $1bn - the fact is, unless there is a credible development pathway for one or more of the assets to potentially realise value, then the shares may as well be worthless. Right now with Grangesberg & Parys all we have is the hope somebody will come along and make an offer for the assets, the former is immensely high capex and more or less pie-in-the-sky in terms of AYM ever developing it, the latter I think needs real focus - but it is a high quality asset which in the current market would well justify further investment especially in exploration to expand and increase confidence in the resources. With LIM there seems to be a bit more impetus but we're still 18 months from first production, its a much lower opex but higher capex project than the market envisaged, with correspondingly long lead times, and its clear from Bill's last interview you're looking at 2023 at the earliest for first production, more likely 2024 - with iron ore prices needing to hold out in the mean time to ensure value to shareholders. I still think the best way to realise value for AYM is to sell the stake in LIM and invest proceeds in exploration at Parys Mtn, particularly focussed on the higher grade copper zones.

Interesting they are presenting the deferral of development as a "prudent decision" by the Board - truth is they had no choice. They couldn't have developed this mine even if they had wanted to, no matter how much money they threw at it - there isn't the labour or expertise in Greenland to do this, they have to bring in external labour and expertise to develop this mine, and with the travel ban that isn't possible.

"Continued geophysical work and geological mapping over the wider exploration portfolio is currently being undertaken to ensure drill-readiness, and the Company looks forward to further updating shareholders on this exciting set of prospects in due course."

Disappointing that there isn't even any exploration drilling go on currently, you'd have thought even with Covid they would have enough domestic presence to do this. Basically over the past 9 months they have spent how much money doing nothing of any consequence?

"With respect to the review of the Nalunaq development plan, the Company has engaged the global mining consulting firm Ausenco to conduct a thorough, independent, review of all technical aspects of the mine development. This third-party review will assist the Company in determining what, if any, amendments are needed to the plan and schedule, and allow the Board to present a revised plan to shareholders that reflects such amendments as we consider appropriate. This revised plan will clearly also address costs and any potential further capital requirements, with an assessment of how the Company intends to meet them. The review is currently ongoing, and the Company will report its revised plan to shareholders as soon as reasonably practicable."

This makes more sense, I said this would be necessary from Day 1 of the listing on AIM, all on the record here in past posts. Really quite incredible that so much equity was raised without a technical study of any kind really, shows how overheated the gold junior mining market was 9 months ago, and the lack of due diligence by people throwing money at gold juniors. Probably a second equity raising required to bring this into production now.

"Just a question ? How much copper has been mined in Cornwall, and world class copper it is , in the last 100 years?"

Almost none. Some copper was produced by Wheal Jane in the 70s and 80s, but more or less negligible quantities. Most the major Cornish copper mines were closed by the 1860s, and the commodity of focus since then has more or less continually been tin.

It is probable that total production of copper has been in the region of 2 million tonnes of metal, though records are incomplete. Tin is around 2.5 million tonnes of metal, and considering its higher value (throughout most of human history) that is by far the greatest revenue source of the Cornish mines overall.

However past production doesn't necessarily predict future production. Mining techniques have changed considerably since 1870, and copper has not been explored for systematically at all since then, so its possible there are economically viable deposits, although I don't think anyone ever expected to find this in the middle of one of the most intensely mined areas in Cornish mining history (Gwennap). It would then beg the question, if they missed that, what else did they miss - but first let's see what's actually there.

You can mine more ore in a modern metal mine operation with 100 miners today in a year, than with 1000 miners in a decade back in the mid 19th century. Development (tunnels) can be put in much more rapidly, and exploration drilling can find out from a hole in a few weeks what would have taken years of tunnelling to find out for the miners of the 19th century.

No, Cornwall is not going to replace Chile, this is going to be an absolutely negligible amount of copper on a global basis. But you don't need to find very much copper of this grade, to have a very profitable mine. The United Downs intersection is spectacular, if its indicative of a wider deposit, it will be very valuable. And if there is nowt there, then there is still Crofty, one of the highest grade tin projects out there, particularly in a decent jurisdiction.

Hi MajorOak, no problem glad to be of help, I can expand on lithium a bit more - although maybe I should be posting in EMH, but they might not like everything I have to say.

Piedmont is a very solid prospect, I am familiar with that one, it is advanced stage too. Spodumene in North Carolina, in an area of historic extraction. Offtake for spodumene concentrates with Tesla too, yeah that's about as good as it gets. Honestly, there is a lot of rubbish in the lithium space, most of which won't be developed - but Piedmont is a decent credible project near the top of the list to be funded into production in the foreseeable future imo. I think it's as safe a bet as any in the lithium space.

I would say also that you can't just produce lithium as a byproduct of tin normally, just because there is a tin project in Cornwall, it doesn't necessarily overlap with lithium micas as well. That's actually fairly unusual, although Cinovec and Zinnwald are examples. You require a greisen deposit with incidental tin (and tungsten) mineralisation in a lithium mica granite. Many tin/tungsten greisen deposits are not in lithium micas. Many lithium micas don't contain greisen deposits.

There aren't any known direct equivalents in Cornwall - partly because no one has looked for them - yet. Cligga Head is about the closest thing but the lithium micas are lower grade there. So the byproduct tin/tungsten is an advantage of Cinovec over the projects in Cornwall, but the disadvantage of Cinovec is its underground whereas the lithium mica resources in the St Austell granite can be quarried and are contiguous to existing china clay pits, with current planning permission etc - big advantages in cost there for Cornwall. Obviously the lithium mica processing route is unproven in the West, there is nowhere operational currently using that flowsheet, although China appears to be using lithium micas at a number of operations now in Jiangxi province. So for that reason spodumene is seen as lower risk by the market in general.

I'm not a specialist in lithium, and would say ultimately, there is a lot of lithium deposits in the world. There are more possible sources of lithium than there ever will be demand, and many of the projects out there will never be developed. There is huge uncertainty as to what the future make up of lithium production capacity will look like in terms of the ratio of spodumene, lithium micas and brines - and I don't have the answers to which will ultimately prove the most commercially successful. In the short to medium term, the key is rapid (and low capex) development of new capacity of low technical risk - and so from that front I can't really advise an investment in a lithium mica project... but if I was to, it would be British Lithium's project. They have a very good deposit, open from surface, in an existing china clay extraction area - of massive scale and decent grade, and they seem to have assembled a serious well qualified team to move it fo

I want to just come back to a post I made on 01 Oct 2020 11:13, called "PEA Potential - Significant VMS deposit ready for development" where I posted a Buy Rating at 1.8p, you can find it on this page currently; https://www.lse.co.uk/profiles/southwesterner/?page=7

In that post I said I'd done some remodelling of Parys Mtn as a larger scale operation, and the economics looked very attractive, and basically the then market cap of AYM of £3.5m, was too low, for this asset, based on similar VMS projects. The two I picked out for that post were unquestionably slightly larger scale VMS deposits, at a more advanced stage, and they were both in the £15-20m market cap range then. They were Sulphur Springs (Venturex Resources, Western Australia) and McIlvenna Bay (Foran Mining, Sasketchewan).

So the interesting thing and reason I'm making this post 5-6 months on to revisit this is, both those companies have enjoyed a massive re-rating over the past few months. They are now both capitalised at over £100m. Meanwhile, AYM is capitalised at £10m, and its undeniable that part of that value is our stake in LIM, which if sold tomorrow could net £4m or so. So what has gone wrong? The Parys Mountain asset isn't being recognised by the market, thats my point. We have a significant VMS deposit of considerable potential, currently being valued as near enough worthless. This is primarily because the market has no faith there is a plan to move it forwards and develop it. The asset itself is strong.

When I posted the buy recommendation on 1st October 2020, it was immediately following the announcement a revised PEA to look at a larger scale project was in process and would be released to the market later that year. There was a clear newsflow rationale for a re-rating, the PEA was paid for and underway. Now we are waiting for what exactly? We're waiting for a plan on how to move the project forwards. Until the market sees that, the project remains worthless - but you'd be a fool to short this share. The true potential value of Parys Mtn is much, much higher than the current share price. Does that mean I'm going to post a buy recommendation, or get back in myself again.... I'm not sure. Mulling it over. Lack of direction and impetus is the only thing holding this share back now, the asset is good for the current market, and this should be on the list of copper-zinc projects to go into production later this decade - but that'll only happen if the Board do something.

Really what this needs is £4m for a major drilling program at Parys Mtn to expand the resources and increase their confidence, followed by a PFS, and I am pretty confident at the end of that there will be a very strong NPV to show for it, and the shares will be worth multiples of what they are now. The Board could sell the stake in LIM and show faith in Parys Mtn by investing it there. Otherwise why not just sell all the assets and return whatever money is left to shareholders.

"I previously invested in Sirius Minerals which was an exciting (although admittedly high risk) venture which ultimately came unstuck because every time they needed cash for the next phase of development they did a share issue which diluted the private investors holdings until there was no value left and the mine was taken over by an American conglomerate for next to nothing. Although I got burnt on that occasion I'm tempted to buy into CM (partly out of nostalgia as I'm originally from Cornwall and I appreciate this is a foolish reason to invest but nevertheless I'm not looking for a 'quick buck')and would genuinely like to see mining return to Cornwall. The anxiety I have is about it going the same way as Sirius where PIs are manipulated out - although very early days has anyone any views on future funding requirements and the potential risk of share dilution?"

I understand your anxiety, as someone who supported Sirius Minerals wholeheartedly from Day 1 but never bought the shares because of the financing risk, I believe CUSN has different challenges. The primary risk for CUSN is - what is actually in the ground at United Downs. We will come to see that over this Summer from the fully funded drilling that will take place. If there is a lode there of significance, even relatively localised, as it appears from the geology of the area and the intersection of structures in the 2nd CL borehole, and a high grade (4% Cu Eq+) copper-tin resource of 2Mt+ can be defined in close proximity to the Wheal Maid decline, I think this will be undoubtedly economically viable, I think the limited funding (around $60m) to put this into production will be relatively easy to obtain from a mixture of debt and equity. The Woodsmith project was always too much for the banks/debt financiers to stomach, and too much to raise in equity for an unproven company in an unproven commodity (I actually think the commodity risks were overplayed with SXX but its perception not reality that matters, and the perceptions were polyhalite was new and dangerous - Anglo American can see the truth, this is just a mixture of plant nutrients which has an inherent value based on existing price benchmarks, but others could not). Anyway, so the specific risks in financing that applied to Woodsmith don't apply here, the challenges and risks here are different, and I'm comfortable to invest here whereas I wasn't in Sirius. Do your own research, come to your own decision, but I think you could do worse than CUSN. I also think CUSN is really struggling to be taken seriously by PI's in general (based on the poor performance in the NR Private Markets raise, contrasting with the strong broker raise) - because PI's are just seeing the romanticised South Crofty headgear in the sunset image of things - forget that, this will be a very profitable operation, if the structure at United Downs is confirmed. And if not, Crofty could still come into play at the right tin price so all is not lost.

Alright no offence MajorOak but enough with the copy and pasting stuff about lithium mica granites here, this has limited/no relevance to Cornish Metals.

I will proviso this by saying yes you are right. The potential of the lithium micas in Cornwall, particularly in the St Austell granite, has long been known, although largely forgotten. There is a BGS Report (Vol 19, No.4) from 1987 called "The lithium potential of the St Austell Granite" which I have on the desk in front of me, that looks at this in some detail - they sampled hundreds of locations back then and did extensive analyses. Since then of course lithium demand has increased inexorably, and continues to - so the commercial value of these deposits is now significant. There is enough information in that report to show there is a huge lithium mica resource in the old china clay areas, the best spot seemingly being around Gunheath and Hensbarrow beacon, which is what British Lithium have "discovered". That is going to be at least 400Mt @ 0.4% Li2O total resource down to a depth of 250 metres, and I expect you could encompass around 120Mt @ 0.5% Li2O into an openpit design at a guess, which will compare favourably to Cinovec's underground resource. But there is also a larger and lower grade deposit around the Nanpean to St Dennis area, several billion tonnes @ 0.2% Li2O, no doubt with some higher grade parts, and Cornish Lithium are looking at the Trelavour Downs china clay pit area which presumably grades higher than the average for this area.

However, Cornish Metals have no interest in the potential lithium mica resources, and you cannot buy shares in British Lithium currently. Cornish Metals only own a free carried stake and royalty in the Cornish Lithium brine project on their mineral right holdings, including the United Downs area. They do not own a stake in Cornish Lithium's projects that aren't on their mineral rights. So if the lithium micas turn out to be good, that isn't going to benefit Cornish Metals (CUSN).

The primary value driver here is the United Downs copper-tin project, and South Crofty tin project - not lithium. That isn't going to change.

On the one hand... the source of rumours were just be someone conjecturing on twitter, that it would make sense for this to happen, rather than any actual leak or new source of information. Nonetheless, I tend to agree, Parys Mtn is an asset of high enough quality and scale now, as demonstrated in the recent PEA, to be of interest to a company like Boliden who have interests in both copper and zinc mining and smelting. A great source of a variety of base metal concentrates, with strong byproduct credits. A decent scale of operations, planning permissions and local support, further exploration potential, a good mine life, decent economic returns which could be increased with further optimisation...

And they could pick it up very cheap. I mean frankly Parys Mtn should be worth £15-25m alone in the current metal pricing environment, but the whole of AYM market cap is £12m, and that includes £4m of shares in LIMH. They have a few million of debt payable though. But the real problem is no one believes the Board is going to do anything to advance Parys Mtn, so they are not ascribing normal valuations. Thats probably true sadly. Whilst the rest of the market particularly those junior miners involved with copper have moved up over the past few months, AYM remains stagnant. So selling Parys Mtn would make sense I think, and in the current market you are likely to get at least £15m for it again, whereas a few years ago when this was last touted I think would have been lucky to get £5m. What doesn't make sense is acquiring more projects! If AYM can't move Parys Mtn forwards, which is an advanced project and a pretty decent one I think, then why would you acquire more projects? I guess it can't do any harm, and who knows they might pick something out that everyone else has missed that could add value like Labrador Iron did.

Also... on that note, need to get on with that LIM PEA and reopen it before iron ore prices go down again!

I tend to think overall at these stupid (low) prices AYM is a buy again. With the same proviso as always, depends on action from the Board to realise any potential value.

"Of some relevance is the opening of a new smelter in Sweden to run mainly on hydrogen - they are anticipating a significant increase in demand for steel in Europe in the coming years as huge infrastructure projects are started Europe wide to mitigate the damage to economies by Covid. Whether this is or will generate interest in bringing Grangeburg back into production remains to be seen but although Sweden has significant iron ore deposits in many locations it is always going to be easier to recommission a mothballed mine that start something from scratch and the hydrogen angle for the new smelter designed to reduce the large amounts of CO2 produced traditionally from making steel is going to encourage Swedish steel making significantly."

Haha. European steel production has been stagnant or falling for decades. The reality is any increased use of steel for infrastructure in Europe will be provided for by more imports, until they get serious about a carbon border tax, which in reality is still a long way off. Talk is cheap. Action will be controversial, and so it will be phased in over long implementation periods, to ensure it is not disruptive. In the short term before they get serious about that sort of thing, the Hybrit process you refer to in Sweden is just going to increase costs further, making Swedish steel more expensive. Currently the only plant under construction is a relatively small scale demonstration plant, so there won't be any additional capacity for the next 5 years at least, and the quantities involved are very small compared to the overall market. Its just them hedging their bets that something might need to happen, and if it does, they will be in a strong position to capitalise by having the most advanced technology for low CO2 emission production of steel. When more hybrit-type operations are built in Europe, they will likely replace (partially) existing capacity, not be in addition, and again this will only happen when and if the EU actually start to implement carbon border tariffs. There won't be any overall increase in demand domestically for iron ore as a result. SSAB have their blast furnace in Oxelösund (near Grangesberg) pencilled for closure in 2025, and its replacement will likely be smaller in capacity. On average, the steel market has been in surplus and generally unprofitable for companies in Europe for decades, which is why gradually capacity is being closed. Companies are desperately trying to move up the value chain, producing more speciality steels, but lower in volumes, especially in Sweden - and this isn't conducive to creating more demand for iron ore. Your research is poor and heavily rose-tinted.

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