1

For global mining,it’s a year

to hunker downAt its annual convention in To-

ronto this week, the Prospec-tors and Developers Associa-

tion of Canada plays host to tens of thousands of mining executives, ven-dors, bankers and bureaucrats. While still the industry’s largest event, PDAC 2013 promises to be more low key than in years past, as lackluster growth in metal prices forces the industry to adjust.

Aggressive junior miners and explor-ers – the entrepreneurial lifeblood of the industry - are out in force once again, eager to drum up cash, or better yet, secure a takeover offer. But with estab-lished miners hunkering down, many are scaling back or delaying their ambi-

tions. As a consequence, the event is less about who’s strik-ing the big deal and more about who has the best strate-gies for riding out the doldrums.

Mining PDAC

The gold-processing

plant under

construction at Barrick

gold’s Pascua-Lama

mine along the Chile-

Argentina border,

pictured in a Feb

2, 2012, company

handout. REUTERS/

BaRRick/HandoUT

2

Coming Back Down to Earth BY JULiE gORDOn

TOROnTO, MARCh 1, 2013

T he euphoria that dominated the global mining industry in recent years, when rapid Chinese growth

sent metal prices soaring, is fully spent. With metal prices now stagnant and profit margins slim, budget cuts and multibillion dollar writedowns have become the norm.

In reaction, shareholders have demand-ed blood over the past year - sometimes in the form of a chief executive’s head - leav-ing new management to usher in policies of cost controls and disciplined spending. Traditional equity financing deals have all but evaporated, leaving many small miners high and dry.

“With the fly-up in commodity prices, there was far more of a focus on ‘let’s just

get the production out,’” said Rachael Bar-tels, managing director of Accenture’s global mining group. “Now there is an increased focus on ‘are we doing things the right way?’”

Getting it right in the altered landscape is a theme that will run through this year’s Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto.

With more than 30,000 attending, PDAC ranks as the world’s largest min-ing convention. Traditionally it is the prime venue for exploration companies to tout their projects to outside investors and to established miners.

While most juniors hope one day to ei-ther be swallowed up by a larger player or evolve into a powerhouse, expectations are tempered this year, with many of the big players eschewing M&A in favor of auster-ity after a series of soured takeovers.

Indeed, with economic uncertainty still weighing on commodity prices and over-supply forecast for some base metals and steelmaking materials, the mood is a far cry from the go-go days prior to 2012.

THREE BASIC STRATEGIES As miners and explorers struggle to right their ships, the strategies embraced by companies are generally dictated by their stage of development.

For the small fry, slumping share prices and volatile markets have made it nearly impossible to raise funds through tradi-tional capital markets.

“If you start with a junior, right now - in 2012 and 2013 - cash is king,” said Bruce Sprague, national mining leader with ac-counting firm Ernst & Young.

Those with cash are stretching it out

Mining PDAC

An aerial view of the open pit at the Diavik diamond mine, south of the Arctic Circle in Canada’s northwest Territories, February 13, 2008.

REUTERS/camERon FREncH

3

Mining PDAC

to survive through the lean times, while those that need to raise funds for devel-opment work are turning to small pri-vate placements or stream and royalty deals - in which a company agrees to sign over future production in exchange for up-front cash.

Sprague also sees so-called “mergers of equals” becoming popular, as two similar-sized juniors look to partner up to create a larger combined entity.

That was the plan for Keegan Resources Inc and PMI Gold Corp when the two Ghana-focused exploration companies an-nounced a tie-up in December. But it did not go as planned. The two backed away from the deal in February when it became apparent that PMI’s shareholders would reject a takeover. Keegan has since changed its name to Asanko Gold Inc.

DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH For the mid-tiers, caught in the middle of their growth phase, strategic focus is in-creasingly important. Many are looking to turn assets that do not quite fit their port-folio into cash, and then using that cash to fund other developments.

“Divestiture is a theme,” said Sprague. “Maybe we can divest of one property, that gives us cash and fills our coffers, so we can look at building one of these other assets.”

Selling one asset to fund another has worked well for Harry Winston Diamond Corp, which aims to transform itself into a leading Canadian diamond producer.

The company, which owns 40 percent of Rio Tinto Plc’s Diavik diamond mine, offered in November to buy BHP Billi-ton Plc’s majority stake in the Ekati mine in northern Canada. Two months later, it reached a deal to sell its luxury arm to Swit-zerland’s Swatch , making a clean break from jewelry retailing.

The shuffle not only made clear Harry

Winston’s strategic direction - the company is also renaming itself as Dominion Diamond Corp - but also left the miner with extra cash in its pocket for future dealmaking.

While the ducks all lined up for Harry Winston, other mid-tiers looking to offload assets may not be so lucky.

“I think it’s going to be a challenging environment for them,” said Darren Le-kkerkerker, a fund manager at Pyramis Global Advisors, a Fidelity Investments company. “There’s not a lot of buyers and, unsurprising, it’s usually not their best as-sets that they want to sell.”

Still, there are other ways to unlock value, even in a volatile market. HudBay Minerals Inc, which is building the Constancia copper mine in Peru, struck a $750 million stream fi-nancing deal with Silver Wheaton Corp last summer, effectively monetizing some of its precious metal by-products.

MANAGING THE CYCLE At the other end of the spectrum are top miners like Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Anglo American, which have all replaced their CEOs in recent months. Many of the top diversified and precious metal miners are facing declining cash flows as costs rise and commodity prices weaken.

“If your iron ore businesses are making billions and the investors are getting lots of cash, it’s very easy to sort of downplay poorer performance,” said Bartels. “The softening prices have basically exposed poor performance.”

After being burned by costly deals made during the boom, management teams are

now pledging to rein in costs and maxi-mize returns, shunning the old mandate of growth at any cost.

“It’s very easy to invest, invest, invest when there’s a boom in the prices,” said Bartels. “One of the things the mining companies really need to work on is being able to manage across the cycle.”

GIVING BACK TO SHAREHOLDERS To that end, Newmont Mining Corp, a big Denver-based gold miner, is rolling out a new productivity plan and has promised to prioritize its dividend, which is pegged to the price of gold. It boosted its dividend by 21 percent to 42.5 cents per share in the first quarter of 2013.

“As an industry, our total return perfor-mance has been poor, especially against the backdrop of more than a decade of year-on-year gold price increases,” said Gary Goldberg, Newmont’s new chief executive, in a mid-February conference call when he was transitioning from his previous role as chief operating officer.

By focusing on returning cash directly to shareholders through regular dividends, min-ing companies can rebuild value and that will ultimately boost share prices, analysts say.

But while dividends are the new trend in the post-boom era, there is still room for mining companies to do what they do best - which is finding, developing and building good mines.

“If they have a great project, I’m happy that they execute that project and create value that way,” said Lekkerkerker, who co-manages the Fidelity Global Natural Re-sources Fund. “If not, and they can’t create value through building a project, I would prefer dividends back.”

Editing by Frank McGurty and Jim Marshall

As miners and explorers struggle to right their ships, the strategies embraced by companies are generally dictated by their stage of development.

4

Mining PDAC

Finland ranked as top mining locale as Canada slipsBY ALLisOn MARTELL

TOROnTO, MARCh 1, 2013

T he Nordic countries of Finland and Sweden have topped an an-nual ranking of the world’s best

jurisdictions for miners to operate, beating out all of Canada’s provinces for the first time in six years.

The uncertainty that comes with dealing with disputes over aboriginal land claims is a rising concern for miners looking to op-erate in Canada, said a report released on Thursday by the Fraser Institute, in explain-

ing why Canadian jurisdictions fell short. The report, based on a survey of 742

mining and exploration companies, looks at whether mining policies in 96 jurisdictions around the world encourage investment. The Canadian Atlantic province of New Bruns-wick, which placed first last year, fell to fourth.

“In the opinion of mining executives who guide investment decisions, things are changing in Canada’s policy context that make it look less appealing,” said Kenneth Green, the institute’s senior director for en-ergy and natural resources studies.

That said, Canadian jurisdictions still did well, relative to the rest of the world. Alberta placed third, and Yukon Territory also made the top 10.

Other top jurisdictions included the western U.S. states of Wyoming, Nevada and Utah, as well as the Republic of Ireland.

Indonesia ranked as the least attractive lo-cation for investment, according to the survey.

The Fraser Institute, a think tank that typically advocates lighter government regu-lation, releases its rankings each year on the eve of the Prospectors and Developers As-sociation of Canada convention. This year’s PDAC convention, the industry’s largest gathering, kicks off on Sunday in Toronto.

Finland got points for its tax system, political stability, and labor supply, and because there is little of the uncertainty around disputed land claims seen in other jurisdictions.

“The Nordic countries seem to have very stable policy regimes,” said Green. “They have ranked well for many, many years.”

One respondent quoted anonymously in the report said Finland has “no unnecessary regulations and a government that supports

mining and clears away obstructions.”Utah and Ireland got top billing for

infrastructure, and Sweden was found to suffer from less redundant or inconsistent regulation than most jurisdictions.

DUTY TO CONSULTThe Supreme Court of Canada has said that governments must consult with aboriginal groups before taking any action that might affect their treaty rights, including “credible but unproven” land claims.

Exactly what that means is in dispute. On Monday, the government of the Can-ada’s Yukon territory said it would ask the top court to hear a related case. But for now, in practice, land claims could emerge as a factor in nearly any new mining project.

The birth of “Idle No More,” a new Ca-nadian protest movement focused on ab-original rights, could also ratchet up pressure on miners looking to launch new projects.

Helped by social media, Idle No More has spread across the country and abroad, drawing comparisons to “Occupy Wall Street.” It has staged protests in dozens of shopping malls across North America, and there have also been rallies, marches and highway and rail blockades.

Residents of the remote northern com-munity of Attawapiskat, Ontario, unhappy with the terms of their 2005 deal with De Beers, a subsidiary of Anglo American PLC, have twice this year set up blockades on an ice road leading to the company’s Victor diamond mine.

“Comments from miners suggest that while Canadian jurisdictions remain com-petitive globally, uncertainties with aborigi-nal consultation and disputed land claims are growing concerns for some,” the Fraser Institute report said.

Additional reporting by Julie Gordon; Editing by Frank McGurty and Andrew Hay

First nations protestors dance during an “idle

no More” demonstration on Parliament hill in

Ottawa January 28, 2013. REUTERS/cHRiS WaTTiE

View graphic: http://link.reuters.com/vab46t

Above map is not meant to be a definitivecompilation of all March 20 demonstrations

Demonstration sizes ranged from 1,000-2,000 in a few cities,to the hundreds and only a few demonstrators in many

PROTESTS NATIONWIDE (Mar. 20 demonstrations)

A coalition of opposition groups declared a national “Day of Anger” withnationwide rallies tapping into anger which has been rising since the eco-nomic crisis hit. The protests mixed local issues with anger at the federal gov’t

R U S S I A

The largest recent protest so far occurred late Jan. in Kaliningrad, with 10,000 people showing up to protest a new trans-portation tax

Authorities denieddemonstrators assembling in Pushkin Square

About 2,000 gatherednear the site of January’sprotest, but quickly dis-persed in heavy rain

About 1,000 gathered to decry Putin’s decision to reopen a factory that locals say pollutes Lake Baikal

At least 1,500 gathered in the Pacific port, raising their hands to support amotion to dismiss Putin’s government

Cities wheredemonstrationsheld

Irkutsk

Vladivostock

MoscowSt. Petersburg

Archangelsk

Kaliningrad

AVERAGE WAGE

2007 2008 2009-10

-5

0

5

10

15

20

Real wages, m/m change, in percent

0

2

4

6

8

10

UNEMPLOYMENT

2007 2008 2009

8.69.4

7.17.2

In percent

Russian Police broke up an opposition demonstration in Moscow on Saturday, one of around 50 rallies across the country with thousands protesting falling living standards under Prime Minister Vladimir Putin

RUSSIA PROTESTS

Sources: Reuters, Fed. State Statistics Service, Boris Nemtsov,Union of Russia Car Owners, news reports

5

Mining PDAC

Cash-hungry gold standard sits pretty in nevada

BY CAMEROn FREnCh

TOROnTO, MARCh 1 2013

I f mineral exploration, like real estate, is all about location, then Gold Standard Ventures Corp would appear to own the

equivalent of a penthouse on Park Avenue. Its flagship gold project sits in Nevada’s

productive Carlin Trend, nestled next to projects owned by Barrick Gold Corp and Newmont Mining Corp. Its location makes the explorer a prime prospect to be scooped up by one of the mining giants or secure financing for its Railroad project.

Unfortunately for Gold Standard, fun-draising is often about timing. These are

tough times to be a gold explorer, particu-larly one trying to delineate an extractable resource in a district where development costs tend to be high.

Put simply, the Vancouver-based com-pany, like other gold explorers, is having a hard time raising money, though explo-ration has gone well, it said. As a conse-

Miners stand in a shaft at the goldstrike Mine in nevada’s Carlin Trend. March 11, 2008. REUTERS/adam TannER

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Mining PDAC

quence, Gold Standard’s shares, which ran as high as C$3.03 last year, are now strug-gling to stay above C$1.00.

“In this market - I’ll be blunt - every-one’s having a tough time getting trac-tion, but we feel that (our) contiguous land package is very rare and unique,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Jonathan Awde, who will travel to Toronto this week for the annual Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference.

That package consists of 19,000 acres on the Carlin Trend, a geologic formation that is home to big operations such as Barrick’s Gold-strike and Newmont’s Rain mine and has pro-duced more than 70 million ounces of gold.

Gold Standard purchased Railroad in 2010, and has since bought additional par-cels of land to the south of the project.

The company is now the third-largest landholder on the Carlin Trend, and has several former Newmont staffers on its payroll, including head of exploration Dave Mathewson, a former head of Newmont’s exploration in the region.

If this makes it look like Gold Standard is just biding time until it gets bought by one of the nearby giants, Awde isn’t look-ing to disagree.

“I think the two ways in this market to maximize shareholder value are discovery and M&A. Very few juniors can ever make the transition form explorer to producer,” he said.

Until that happens, if indeed it does, Gold Standard must continue to fund its

own exploration and move toward the point where it can produce a 43-101 resource classification, which would raise the value of the project and make funding easier.

The company was a Toronto Stock Ex-change high-flyer early last year, its shares quadrupling in a little over four months on the back of encouraging drilling data. One hole yielded a rich 3.38 grams a tonne over 164 meters. That result drove the company’s shares up by 61 percent overnight.

But the stock ran into trouble when it announced a public stock offering in June, around the time fears were rebuilding about the global economy.

The deal was priced at C$2 a share, about 25 percent below where the company was trading, which sparked immediate selling that only got worse when Gold Standard reported drill results in August that failed to meet the market’s lofty expectations.

The offering “took a lot of arm-twist-ing to get it done, and our stock just got pounded and beaten,” said Awde. “We were shorted and pounded and were bid by a large fund with a price sensitive order

that was 17 percent below the market.” The company now has about C$9 mil-

lion in cash, which Awde says should get them through six to nine months of drilling before they’ll need a fresh infusion.

For all the potential of Railroad, experts said the Carlin Trend is a technically chal-lenging and pricey place to work, meaning finding more gold won’t be cheap.

“The types of Carlin deposits that these guys are drilling are in broken rock and long structures, and so it’s slow drilling and it’s expensive drilling,” said a mining ana-lyst who didn’t want to be identified, citing company policy.

Analysts are generally positive on the company, with Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S showing three “buy” ratings and an average target price of C$4.21, well above the com-pany’s closing price of C$1.03 on the TSX Venture Exchange on Friday.

If the market doesn’t improve over the next several months, Awde said the compa-ny may turn to some of its deep-pocketed investors, including Toronto-based hedge fund manager Albert Friedberg, who came on board in 2011 and currently owns 15 percent of Gold Standard.

“At some point this market will turn and I think companies that have good as-sets in good, politically safe parts of the world around existing infrastructure will receive love,” Awde said.

Editing by Frank McGurty and Kenneth Barry

in this market - i’ll be blunt - everyone’shaving a tough time getting traction,but we feel that (our) land package is very rare and unique.

Jonathan Awde

gold standard CEO

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Mining PDAC

Zenyatta makes bull run on rare graphite depositBY JULiE gORDOn

TOROnTO, MARCh 3, 2013

Z enyatta Ventures Ltd, the top per-forming mining issuer on TSX Venture Exchange in 2012, is

banking on a rare type of natural graph-ite that it says can compete on a quality level with synthetic graphite, while costing much cheaper to produce.

The Thunder Bay, Ontario-based com-pany is in the very early stages of develop-ing its Albany project in northern Ontario, a vein-type graphite deposit. Vein graphite,

also known as lump graphite, is currently only produced in Sri Lanka.

The unique nature of the project has already captured the market’s attention. Zenyatta’s stock quintupled in value from 14.5 Canadian cents to 79 Canadian cents in 2012. In that same period, the broader S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index fell more than 17 percent.

Extending its bull run, the stock has nearly tripled in value so far this year to close at C$2.14 on Friday.

“People recognize, even in a bad market, that certain things look amazingly good,”

Chief Executive Aubrey Eveleigh told Re-uters ahead of the Prospectors and Devel-opers Association of Canada convention, which started on Sunday. “What we pulled out here was extremely rare. The last time one of these was found was probably 200 years ago. People recognize that.”

Graphite has gained popular attention in recent years mainly due to the develop-ment of graphene, the world’s strongest and thinnest material, and for its use in ad-vanced lithium-ion batteries to power tab-lets, smartphones and hybrid vehicles.

While the technology applications get

Zenyatta is banking on a rare

type of natural graphite that it

says can compete on quality with

synthetic graphite but costs less

to produce. A technologist holds

a silicon carbide disk covered

with a layer of graphene in

Warsaw, Poland, on Oct 23, 2012.

REUTERS/ToBy mElvillE

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Mining PDAC

the most attention, graphite - which is highly conductive and can withstand in-tense heat - is primarily used in steelmak-ing and metal work.

There are three basic types of natu-ral graphite - amorphous, �ake and vein. Amorphous graphite is the lowest quality and most abundant, while vein type is the rarest and most valuable.

Synthetic graphite, a man-made mate-rial prized for its consistency and quality, is the most valuable, though it is expen-sive to produce.

Zenyatta says that because its ore is naturally “cleaner” than most deposits, it can produce 99.96 percent pure graphite through a single crush and floatation cir-cuit, followed by a relatively short leach-ing process. So far, the company has only proven the process on a bench scale.

While he would not give exact numbers on costs, Eveleigh said that because the refining process is so simple, Zenyatta can produce create high-purity graphite for just a fraction of the cost of synthetic graphite.

Synthetic costs around $4,000-$5,000 a tonne to produce and sells for around $7,000-$9,000 a tonne, while ultra high-purity graphite can sell for $20,000 a tonne, the company said.

Zenyatta expects to be able to produce around 100,000 tonnes of high-purity graphite a year from its Albany project, which is in some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) northwest of Toronto.

That is well above Sri Lanka’s annual

output of some 4,000 tonnes a year. To be sure, Zenyatta is still in the early days of de-velopment work, with its first resource esti-mate expected in September and a prefea-sibility study due in early 2014.

The Zenyatta team discovered the graphite deposit by accident while survey-ing for copper and nickel. At first the com-pany wasn’t sure what it had found.

“We thought it was massive sulphides - copper nickel. We drilled into it, pulled out the core and I didn’t know what it was,” said Eveleigh. “I’ve been in the business for 30 years and I’d never seen anything like it.”

They ended taking samples to a local uni-versity where it was tested using a powerful electron microscope and eventually identi-fied as hydro-thermal, or vein, graphite.

With demand steadily rising, a swath of junior mining companies have popped up in recent years, with most promoting flake graphite deposits in Canada and around the world.

Zenyatta says it is unique in that its project is the largest, and only new, vein-type graphite deposit in the world.

“If there’s 100 companies out there with

graphite projects right now, 99 of them have flake and there’s one with hydro-ther-mal or vein type,” said Eveleigh.

With some C$5.5 million in cash on hand, and another C$7 million expected from outstanding warrants, Eveleigh said the company has all the funds it needs to get through to a production decision.

Having proven its process on the bench scale, the next step is to ramp up to a pilot plant study, and provide potential custom-ers with sample material. Zenyatta is also completing drill work on its deposit.

The plan is to build an open-pit mine, with the option of eventually going under-ground. Because the deposit is near exist-ing infrastructure, Zenyatta expects capital costs to be around $150 million, in line with other graphite projects.

While a construction decision is still at least a couple of years away, the company is already considering the merits of a strategic partnership, or a deal with an end user.

“We’re been approached by many end users globally - out of Europe, out of Asia, out of the U.S.,” said Eveleigh. “These things could materialize into a strategic partner or buyout. If not, there’s enough value here - I don’t think we’ll have any issues raising money to put it into production.”

Cliffs Natural Resources Inc holds a 12.75 percent stake in Zenyatta, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Editing by Frank McGurty and Richard Chang

Extending its hot streak, the stock has nearly tripled in value so far this year. it was the Venture Exchange’s top performer last year.

© Thomson Reuters 2012. All rights reserved. 47001073 0310. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. ‘Thomson Reuters’ and the Thomson Reuters logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of Thomson reuters and its affiliated companies.

9

Mining PDAC

Canada’s Argex focuses on tech, not miningBY ALLisOn MARTELL

TOROnTO, MARCh 3, 2013

T he TSX Venture Exchange recently hailed Argex Titanium Inc as one of its top-performing mining is-

suers, but the Canadian company is in no rush to actually build a mine.

Instead, Argex is preparing to construct a plant where it can produce titanium di-oxide - used to make white paint, among other things - from ore produced by other companies, using its new extraction process.

“Our focus is getting to cash flow as quickly as possible,” said Chief Executive Roy Bonnell in an interview on the eve of the Prospectors and Developers Asso-ciation of Canada convention, where hun-dreds of junior miners and explorers strut their stuff for investors.

“We’re kind of evolving towards being a specialty chemical company with what I call a hedge against raw material prices, in the fact that we could develop our own properties, if it makes economic sense.”

A feasibility study for Argex’s first commercial-scale plant will likely be done in the next few months, Bonnell said. The company’s target is to commission the plant, which would most likely be built in Quebec, in mid to late 2014.

Argex touts its process, now running at a pilot plant just west of Toronto, as environ-mentally friendly - it says tailings could be safely used as construction material - and

more flexible than conventional techniques. “We can use more sources that the other

methods cannot use,” said Bonnell. “It allows us to essentially source ore bodies that others reject, and (that) therefore are cheaper.”

To be sure, selling pigment-grade tita-nium dioxide would put Argex up against big players - DuPont is a major producer. But last spring, Argex won some support from another heavy hitter, paint producer PPG Industries Inc.

The two companies agreed to a “tech-nical collaboration agreement” to make Argex’s pigment compatible with PPG’s needs. Terms were not disclosed, but shares jumped as much as 15 percent, to what was then an all-time high.

Analysts that cover Argex are positive, with Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S showing two “strong buy” ratings and one “buy” rating, and an average target price of C$2.38 ($2.32), well above Friday’s closing price of C$1.28.

With a market capitalization of about C$150 million, the stock has more than doubled over the last twelve months.

PROJECT FINANCING Financing has become a major challenge for small mining and exploration compa-nies, as the euphoria that lifted the sector in recent years recedes.

Argex had C$6.7 million in cash and short-term investments as of Sept 30, ac-cording to its last quarterly report. It has more than enough cash to get through this stage, Bonnell said, but will need project fi-nancing to build a full plant.

That could mean traditionally equity and debt financing, Bonnell said, a strategic part-nership with a customer, a supplier, or another processing company, or all of the above.

In 2010, Argex completed a resource es-timate on its La Blanche iron, titanium and

vanadium property, on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. It also owns an iron ore property in the Labrador Trough of Eastern Canada.

Big swings in the price of iron ore over the last six months, paired with uncertainty over how much Quebec’s government will help develop the area, has jeopardized the viability of projects in the rich iron region.

In February, Canadian National Rail-way Co hit pause on its plan to build a new rail line through the trough, a geological formation that extends south-southeast through Quebec and Labrador.

While Bonnell sees long-term potential in the region, he is not rushing into anything.

“Prices have come back a lot since last year,” he said. “Prices aren’t bad, but I think ... interest is still a little bit weak at this stage.” ($1 = $1.03 Canadian)

Editing by Frank McGurty and Sofina Mirza-Reid

Argex aims to construct a plant where it can produce titanium dixoide - used to make white paint, among other things - using its new extraction process.

The company has more than enough cash to get through its current stage, but will need project financing to build a full plant.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:FRANK MCGURTY, EDITOR, CANADIAN COMPANY NEWS frank.mcgurty@thomsonreuters.comCOLLEEN MCGILL, HEAD OF CLIENT SPECIALISTS, CANADAcolleen.mcgill@thomsonreuters.comJANET GUTTSMAN BUREAU CHIEF, CANADAjanet.guttsman@thomsonreuters.com