'The Business', 27th. February 2005.
Valued at 64m. Griffin Mining is tiny by international standards but has ventured where mining giants fear to tread. The company has built the first foreign owned and operated mine in China in 100 years, an exercise only possible due to new mining laws six years ago.
Griffin's main project is the Caijiaying zinc-gold mine in Hebei province ,125 miles from Beijing. The company has a 60% stake in the venture, with local interests owning the rest. Under an agreement Griffin will be allowed to take all of the cash generated by the mine in the first three years. The company's share of the bargain is to invest up to 11m. in the development, which should be commissioned in April. The mine will then begin processing 200,000 tons of ore a year to produce 23,000 tons of zinc, gold and associated metals for at least 14 years.
The resource at Caijiaying haas been estimated at up to 23m tons of zinc and up to 2.6m. tons of gold (I THINK THEY GOT THE FIGURES WRONG HERE, BUT I WISH THEY WERE TRUE) by independent consultants. The political risk of operating in China is hard to guage, but unlike Russia, China is relying heavily on outside backing. This strengthens the position of companies such as Griffin with sound legal title and Chinese partners.
Metal prices have been rising. Investors might ask how long this can go on. In the case of zinc the answer is some time. The metal has a wide number of uses, including the galvanising of steel and demand has been rising for thirty years. Zinc is trading on the L.M.E. at more than $1200 a ton. But this is nowhere near it's high. The metal has seen two big peaks- in 1974 at around $1800 and again in 1989 at around $2000. In real terms that 1974 price equals more than $3600, three times the current market price.
In the long term the economics of mining zinc are complicated by the threat that a price surge will increase metal output and by the interdependence on the prices of lead and silver, with which it is often mined.
With the main goal acheived and cash coming in, the management can begin looking more closely at the gold prospects within Griffin's existing licences and at the potential partnerships brought to the business. This raises the possibility that the company will attract another sizeable mining project elsewhere in the country within the year.
Griffin's shares have risen strongly since September 2004, almost doubling in value, but with strength in the mining sector there could be much more to go for. Speculative buy.