A month ago Garimpeiro took a cue from BHP that copper could well be entering a golden era on its read that a coming supply deficit could be pronounced.
It is why he went in search back then for some leveraged exposure to copper amongst ASX stocks without BHP’s monster market cap.
He came up with 29Metals (ASX:29M) which has since risen by 80% to 50.5c (midweek), and Caravel Minerals (ASX:CVV) which is up a handy 25% to 19.5c.
Since then smelters in China, the biggest copper consumer of the electrification metal, have been struggling to secure enough copper concentrates to keep their smelters full.
That has led to the copper price taking off to $US4.12/lb (midweek). A copper price of more than $US4/lb is cause for investor excitement.
In the expectation that the copper juggernaut is just pulling out of the station (Goldman Sachs has it hitting $US5.45/lb by the end of the first quarter next year), Garimpeiro went looking this week for another junior to add to his copper watchlist.
He came up with Noronex (ASX:NRX). It is a little thing all right. At its 1.1c share price (midweek) it has a market cap of $5.1 million.
Garimpeiro’s interest in the stock is based on its big ground position on the Kalahari Copper Belt (KCB) which runs from northern Botswana down into central Namibia.
The KCB is best known in this market for Sandfire’s (ASX:SFR) newish 50,000tpa Motheo copper mine and the recent acquisition by China’s MMG of the privately held Khoemacau copper mine (60,000tpa, expanding to 130,000tpa) for $US1.8bn.
Those mines are on the Botswana side of the KCB while Noronex is on the Namibian side with a 300km strike length of the same prospective rocks. It has done some drilling (45m at 1% copper equivalent) and has a smallish resource under its belt.
Like the KCB itself, Noronex’s copper hunt is an emerging story, one that is all the more interesting now that copper has broken out to more than $US4lb.
But wait, there’s more. Noronex has just added a Namibian uranium leg to its story.
Along with copper, uranium is a hot commodity thanks to last year’s take-off which saw prices run up to more than $US100/kg.
Prices have cooled recently to $US86/lb but remain at 16-year highs and 72% higher year-on-year. And if you are in the uranium exploration hunt, Namibia is as good as it gets.
The country has a long uranium production history and hosts some well-known ASX names in the uranium space – the $490 million Bannerman (ASX:BMN, Etango project), the $3.7 billion Paladin (ASX:PDN, Langer Heinrich), and the $1.07 billion Deep Yellow (ASX:DYL, Tumas).
Noronex’s deal gives it the ability, subject to due diligence, to earn up to an 80% interest in claims that sit about 3km north of Bannerman’s 207 million pound Etango project.
The company said the geology on the claims has similar host rocks and geology to Etango. It said a number of initial drill targets are already identified.
The timing of a drill program depends on the issue of an environmental clearance certificate (ECC). The timing of the ECC is reliant on a National Park clearance like that secured by existing uranium mines in the country.
To support the uranium push, Noronex is pulling in $900,000 from a placement of shares at 0.86c each with attached three-year one-for-two options, exercisable at 1.4c each.
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