“Newcrest also announced an updated indicated and inferred resource for its O’Callaghans deposit of 78 million tonnes containing 260,000 tonnes of tungsten and 220,000 tonnes of copper.

Mr Smith later told journalists the deposit had a fair bit of importance strategically, given only 100,000 tonnes of tungsten was produced each year and 80 per cent of the market was controlled directly by China.

‘‘So they basically control the market.‘‘

It’s been declared by China as a strategic metal.

‘‘There are companies around the world who need tungsten but are finding it difficult at the moment to find access to long-term supply.’’

…..read more  HERE and HERE.  (Newcrest is an Australian Stock which engages in the exploration, development, mining, and the sale of gold and gold/copper concentrate in Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Canada, and the United States. It also involves in the exploration and sale of silver ores. The company primarily owns and operates six mines, including five located in Australia and one in Indonesia. As at June 30, 2009, it had gold reserves of 42.8Moz and copper reserves of 4.67Mt. Newcrest Mining Limited was founded in 1966 and is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia.

AlphaNorth Asset Management runs a Canadian  small-cap, long-biased hedge fund that tries to maximize the risk-reward ratio on its investments.

How? 

“We evaluate all the investments in the portfolio every week and if something comes along that offers more attractive upside versus the downside risk, we’ll swap it out,” said AlphaNorth President and Chief Executive Steven Palmer.

The fund – called AlphaNorth Partners Fund – offers tax-deferred investment returns, thanks to a forward agreement with TD Global Finance, part of Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD), meaning unitholders pay no tax until unit redemption. 

The fund tends to focus on companies with a market capitalization of less than C$100 million.  “Banks’ small-cap funds usually have a cut-off of around C$100 million so 
they’re not looking at the companies we’re looking at; there are a lot of  opportunities to get involved prior to the company going mainstream,” he said. 

Aeromechanical Services, Puget, Colossus Stand Out. The fund is diversified, less than C$50 million in size and comprises some 50 names. Roughly half the fund revolves around resource-based stocks, with the rest a mixture of technology, biotech and special situations, the latter  being companies that are, say, sitting on a unique or niche product.

Palmer likes Aeromechanical Services Ltd. (AMA.V), which provides real-time data communications for the aerospace industry by using the Iridium satellite network.  It has also recently launched a fuel-management program to help airlines  optimize fuel consumption.

“They just turned cash-flow positive in the last quarter, which is a good milestone,” Palmer said. “They’re getting traction in the market and bidding on a lot of new business.” 

Puget Ventures Inc. (PVS.V), an early-stage cobalt company, is in the portfolio, in part because AlphaNorth has been watching how electric-car initiatives have ramped up demand for viable electric batteries.  While this has pushed valuations for lithium-based companies higher, Palmer  said the market hasn’t fully realized that three times as much cobalt as lithium is used in electric batteries.

“(Puget) is much closer to production than some lithium companies; the property produced cobalt in the 1940s,” Palmer said. “It has a unique deposit; it would be the only primary cobalt operation in Canada.”

And then there’s Colossus Minerals Inc. (CSI.T), an exploration company focused on developing Brazilian gold deposits.  “They’ve had some phenomenal results on the property, some of the best drill results I’ve ever seen in terms of value,” Palmer said. “They will continue to put out good results and the company will eventually be taken over.”

Company Web site: http://www.alphanorthasset.com 

-Brian Truscott, Dow Jones Newswires; 604-669-1595; 

brian.truscott@dowjones.com 

MDN Inc. (CA:MDN 0.49, +0.01, +2.08%)  is a mining exploration and development company having adequate financial resources to develop its promising projects in Quebec and in Tanzania.The company also owns a 67.5% interest in Mineraux Crevier, which owns a property with a NI 43-101 niobium and tantalum resource located in the Lac St-Jean area of Quebec. MDN has an option to increase its equity participation in Mineraux Crevier up to 87.5%. Additional information is available on MDN’s website at www.mdn-mines.com. MDN also remains active in the search for new business opportunities that can raise shareholder value. In addition to its 30% participation in the Tulawaka Gold Mine, MDN is the operator and owner of a majority interest in mineral licenses totalling 621 sq km around the Tulawaka gold mine in Tanzania.

MDN Inc. (CA:MDN 0.49, +0.01, +2.08%)  announces that it has increased its participation in Mineraux Crevier Inc. (MCI) from 38.5% to 67.5% by acquiring the equity interests of minority shareholders. The two shareholders of MCI are now MDN with 67.5% and IAMGOLD with 32.5%.

The acquisition was paid in cash for an amount of $582,750 and by the issuance of 3,349,777 common shares of MDN Inc.

As a reminder, MCI holds 100% of a niobium and tantalum project, located north of Lac St-Jean in the province of Quebec. A feasibility study on the project is currently ongoing.

Additional information is available on MDN’s website at www.mdn-mines.com.

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) — The Democratic Republic of Congo’s government should “respect its commitments” concerning Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.’s $1.8 billion Tenke copper and cobalt project, according to a parliamentary report.
The Tenke project is the last question mark after a two- and-a-half year government review of all Congo’s mining contracts. The main point of contention between the two sides was over state-owned Gecamines’ stake, which was reduced from 45 to 17.5 percent in 2005.

Though the renegotiation was legal, the contract was “badly negotiated” by the government, the commission said. Tenke is now 57.75 per cent controlled by Freeport. Canada’s Lundin Mining Corp. has a 24.75 per cent share.

The Tenke mine, which opened in March 2009, is currently producing 250 million pounds (113.4 million kilograms) of copper and 18 million pounds of cobalt a year. Its second phase of investment will allow it to produce 400,000 metric tons of the metals, according to the report. Cash-strapped Congo could receive as much as $50 million in payments from the project this year, the commission said.

Bemba Arrested

The 2005 reduction of Gecamines’ stake was negotiated by then-vice president in charge of mines, Jean Pierre Bemba. Bemba was arrested in 2008 and is awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court for leading militias that raped and murdered civilians in the Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003.

The commission’s report was spearheaded by Modeste Bahati Lukwebo, a deputy in the National Assembly, and was sent to the government in late January.
Congo produces about half the world’s cobalt, a metal used in jet engines and rechargeable batteries, and holds 4 percent of global copper reserves.

My view has been that the key macro trend is one where China will gradually become a major, self-sufficient global economic power whose development of a middle class will nourish the OECD sunset economies as the Chinese standard of living catches up to that of OCED members. In the even longer run as China begins to grapple with its own demographic problem India with its youthful demographics will pick up the slack and become the driver of global economic growth. In a globalized economy where significant imbalances in living standards between relatively large and smaller population bases exist, and where capital is free to seek out the place with the lowest cost structure, mobilize local resources, and transport goods and services into regions with higher cost structures, the OECD has a 20-30 year window during which its objective should be to prevent the crash of its own living standard and sustain itself on the rising living standard of the have-nots. If the United States has any rival outside of China it has to be Europe and not Japan. During the past few weeks China has been put off balance by stories such as Google’s threatened withdrawal due to Internet censorship, a US decision to ship $6.4 billion in weapons to Taiwan, and an escalation of public anxiety about Iran’s nuclear ambitions which has isolated China as the sole nation unwilling to sacrifice its security of supply interests for a common good.

China, in turn, has retaliated by tightening its banks’ lending requirements in a move ostensibly designed to cool internal inflation, but which is also intended as a warning to the OECD that in so far that it hopes to pull itself out of recession on the coattails of China, it should perhaps not count too heavily on a China portrayed as “Big Bad China”. With China checking out for a little siesta it is a good time for the United States to deal with Europe through its proxies, the transnational mercenaries which have no geopolitical allegiance but do owe some gratitude to the Obama administration for not playing hardball during the 2008 meltdown. The relevant question for the medium term future is, who suffers less as China rises, the United States or Europe? The trouble with this question is that it posits a false dichotomy, for nationalism is a sop for the saps who cast their votes for politicians already bought and paid for by interests who are neither Europeans, Brits nor Americans. The proper question should be how is the disparity between the standard of living of population bases whose economies are de-industrializing and those which are industrializing to be managed so as to avoid chaotic eruptions of the pitchfork or “sieg heil” variety? This risk is for the moment acute because the United States and Europe are both in a state of denial about the course history is taking, which is that the significantly larger Asian population bases will drive the world’s economic future, and in doing so determine the power landscape of the future.

Gold is bound to be a natural beneficiary of this transition period because we cannot predict the political structure of this future, and gold is the ideal long term hedge against this uncertainty. That is why I believe we have entered a period of real increases in the price of gold which may not be very dramatic in nominal terms for speculators hoping to profit from higher prices (oddly, they unanimously seem determined to calculate those profits in dollars!), but which real gains have a profound leveraged impact on the value of resource juniors with ounces in the ground that can be developed as mines. But more importantly, this “optimistic” view in which the world’s average standard of living grows at an accelerated pace implies a steady growth in total demand for all raw materials, with particularly high growth for those raw materials which play critical and incremental roles in new technologies. This puts me into the secular bull camp for raw materials where Eric Sprott used to belong, but from which he has distanced himself after committing the sin of wishing this trend to accelerate faster than it could. During the past year I have spent an increasing amount of time on “minor metals”, that oddball group of metals often referred to as “strategic”, “critical”, “specialty” and ever more frequently as “technology” or “rare metals”. The specific group on which I focused last year was the “rare earth” metals, a group of metals in whose supply China completely dominates and which have a broad set of properties which have helped them become key inputs for many new technologies, including those related to “clean” or “renewable” energy.

Kaiser Bottom-Fish Online is a fee based research portal owned and operated by John Kaiser from his base in Moraga, a suburb in the San Francisco area of California. It specializes in high risk Canadian listed securities and seeks to provide investors with a framework for intelligent speculation. The resource sector is the primary focus for an investment approach developed by Mr. Kaiser which combines his “bottom-fishing strategy” with his “rational speculation model”. A full membership costs $800 annually or $250 quarterly. It provides access to online information resources, commentaries and recomendations.