Great Western Minerals Group ("GWMG") (TSX VENTURE:GWG)(OTCQX:GWMGF) has negotiated a Heads of Terms with Ganzhou Qiandong Rare Earth Group Ltd. ("GQD") of China to build a rare earth separation plant in South Africa, located in proximity to GWMG's Steenkampskraal operation.
The value of mergers and acquisitions in the mining sector more than doubled to $96.3 billion in the first six months of the year and could top $200 billion for the whole of 2011 says a new research report. Canadian companies – both as acquirers and as the targets of buyers – dominated corporate finance activity in the first half shaking on more than a deal a day and at 325 deals accounting for almost two-thirds of all the metals and minerals transactions carried out around the world.
Nautilus Minerals' (TSX:NUS)(AIM:NUS) Tongan subsidiary, Tonga Offshore Mining Ltd. ("TOML"), has become one of the first private sector organizations to be granted exploration licences in the highly prospective Clarion Clipperton Zone ("CCZ") of the Eastern Pacific. As a result of exploration conducted in the 1980s, the CCZ is known to host significant deposits of polymetallic nodules, which are golf ball sized nuggets, rich in copper, nickel, manganese and cobalt, lying on the seafloor in water depths starting at 4500 metres.
According to a new report by Business Monitor International Russia's mining sector is set to grow slowly over the forecast period to 2015, marking a reversal of the declining output seen since 2006. Business Monitor forecasts the value of the mining sector to reach US$259bn in 2015 from US$134bn in 2010, marking an annual average growth rate of 2.6%.
Prophecy Platinum's (TSX-V:NKL) rocket has yet to run out of fuel. Five days after it released a PGM-gold-nickel-copper resource its shareprice continued on a steep upward trajectory.
Mindoro Resources Ltd. (TSX VENTURE:MIO) (ASX:MDO) (FRANKFURT:WKN 906167) today announced further positive and encouraging copper-gold results from its Pan de Azucar Project in the Philippines, including PDA-28: 3.9 meters of 5.3 percent copper, 0.78 g/t gold, 55.7 g/t silver, 5.11 percent zinc from 9.2 meters and 54.8 meters of 1.17 percent copper and 0.77 g/t gold from 20.75 meters.
Special Metals Corp. announced this weekend that it will relocate operations from Rockford, Ill., to Elkhart, Ind., creating up to 100 new jobs by 2014. The inventor and producer of high-nickel, high-performance engineering alloys will move its A-1
PNG focused Goldminex Resources which targets large scale gold, copper and nickel deposits is pleased to announce it has signed a US$20 million Farm-In Agreement with Vale in respect to its Owen Stanley Package.
It turns out that China is not willing to pay whatever it has to for energy and metal resources.Several resource deals have faltered in recent months, indicating an increasingly choosy Chinese perspective on energy and metal acquisitions. Add to that the growing concern that the global economy is once again stumbling and that commodity prices may be near a top, and you have a Chinese deal-making market that has gone from 60 to zero in no time.
BBC's Jeremy Clarkson, a car enthusiast who hosts the show Top Gear, ran a documentary on an underground mine in Kalgoorlie, Australia, and learned about the exceptional wear-and-tear exacted on the vehicles. "Here, 2,700 feet down there are machines that have never and will never see the light of day. In one mine there are 300 miles of roads and that means the only means to get about is in a car. They are used for getting men, machines and explosives to the face, and then getting the hell out," narrates Clarkson.