Interesting little company. Did a series of asset swops to leave them with half of the 4th largest Nickel deposit in the world.
The deposit itself is in the Philippines has been known about for 30 years but due to low prices and lack of demand in the Far East it was never exploited. With the explosion in demand from India and China the nickel price has climbed from $2 to $6.50 but oddly enough is still considered low.
The final approval stage for exploitation is just about to be approved and extraction will begin. The company already has one contract with a Japanese smelter and is in discussions with smelters in a series of countries.
Nothing clever about the operation, as the ore is of sufficiently high grade, they dig it up and ship it out. Infrastrucure is already in place for operation.
TMC is currently priced at 18m, the initial Japanese contract is worth 4m and each additional contract will hopefully be at this level or greater.
Final approval turns the company into a producer and each additional contract simply increases their size.
The management is tight with cash and has some good quality mining skills onboard.
The Philippine government is fast tracking the final approval and the company says it expects it shortly.
One to hold for approval and through the series of RNS's as more contracts are won. Company should be worth 50m in 6 months and 100m in 12-18 months.
Buy it, ignore it, just pointing this one out.

Some positive purchases coming through this morning. Hope to see a movement in SP soon, as first shipment is immenent.

Spread has been narrowed this morning, maybe to encourage a bit of trading.

How much risk is there in TMC, bearing in mind, that they are in a tsunami region and their sea defences don't look up to much.

News released on the ASX market, so an ops update should be coming on AIM for TMC and IVK


http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20070305/pdf/3119ph547m7j9p.pdf


5 March 2007

Company Announcements

The Australian Securities Exchange Ltd.

Dear Sir

Re: Second Shipment of Nickel Ore Leaves Berong Port

Berong Nickel Corporation, in which the Company has an 18.7% interest, has advised that a second shipment of laterite ore departed the Berong anchorage area on 2 March 2007. The shipment of approximately 51,000 tonnes ore was loaded in under seven days and is destined for the Chinese market.
A third ship of approximately 50,000 tonnes is expected to commence loading around 6 March 2007, with a fourth ship of similar capacity planned around 20 March. Approximately 100,000 tonnes of laterite ore is currently stockpiled at the coast and available for these shipments.
Demand for laterite ore of the quality and grade produced at Berong exceeds supply by a large margin. To meet this demand Berong Nickel Corporation is rapidly expanding production and building additional stockpiling facilities. Daily mine production is expected to increase to in excess of 3,000 wet metric tonnes per day, and maintained throughout the current dry season.
To date, mine production has come from the lower grade area referred to as the 'bulk metallurgical sample area'. However, future production will come from the 'commercial' mining area where grades will be higher. The access road to this area has been completed and bench formation commenced. This area will supply the majority of ore for the current year.

Mr. George Bujtor, CEO of Berong Nickel Corporation, commented:
"1 am pleased to see how well the start-up of commercial operations has progressed. The whole team is to be congratulated for their diligence, effort and dedication. We can now confidently look forward to the future as we rapidly increase production at Berong to an annualised 1.5 million wet metric tonnes per year from 2008".

Yours faithfully INVESTIKA LTD

What is the market value of unrefined laterite ore per ton?

TMC is selling these samples at 20% of the LME price. 21,000 at last check a few months ago, so TMC should be getting circa 4200 per tonne nickel. Nickel content in these samples is about 1.8%. Therefore a 50,000 ton shipment should be worth approximatley 3,780,000 times 56.1% for TMC share equals 2,120,580 ball park.

Just checked cash price today is 22,602 per ton.Equals 2,282,349 ball park as above.