Shares in ECR Minerals PLC (LON:ECR) have nearly doubled since the start of the year and the reason isn’t too hard to find - new chief executive Craig Brown has been on the road, banging the drum for a suite of assets that many investors had lost touch with.
Indeed, it had come to something as on his move up from part time finance director to full time chief executive, offers for reversals came flooding in.
But ECR remained a mining company, with assets in Australia, the Philippines, and Argentina and Brown resolved to do something of an internal audit before making any hasty decisions on the portfolio.
There was, for example, a realistic possibility that the Australian gold portfolio might be dropped. But after a closer look, it turned out that the Australian projects in fact offer plenty of upside and promise.
“Things have gone quite well,” he says. “Victoria is one of the world’s major gold producing regions and at Byron we have good mineralisation in place.”
With that knowledge in the background it’s encouraging too that recent soil samples have also shown good mineralisation across the wider Bailieston project in Victoria.
The plan now is to gather further data through drilling and see if the potential for a new open pit project can be realised.
Meanwhile, over in Argentina, the company has decided to recommence on-the ground activities on its properties there, with Brown sniffing out opportunity in a sector that has been revitalised locally by the injection of huge amounts of Chinese capital.
“We’re also looking at acquiring a small plant in Argentina,” says Brown. “It’s small, but with some modifications it could be very beneficial for the company putting higher grade material through it. It could produce a good yield.”
Perhaps more to the point, processing small amounts of ore through a small plant could demonstrate the full viability of any larger-scale project to a potential Chinese buyer.
But that sort of development is some way down the line.
The plan for this year is to prove up resources at the ECR projects. In Argentina, the company is confident about improving its position, while in Australia a realistic medium-term goal is the potential monetisation of the Australian projects in a standalone vehicle.
With a decent resource and new injections of funds, that could turn into quite a serious proposition.
To keep it going while sets all these plans in motion, ECR raised around £500,000 through Optiva at the end of last year.
The kitty will need to be topped up before too long, but Brown’s thinking is that drill results from Australia and also from Argentina should be in by then to give further fundraising efforts a considerable boost.
“The market seems quite good,” says Brown. And with 22 years in the mining industry behind him, he’s well placed to judge.
He’s used that experience to bring ECR back to life, and it will be interesting to see how things play out from here.
“I want to develop these projects and get them into production,” he says. And it’s that kind of clear statement of intent that is driving forward ECR’s shares.
Craig Brown was a founding shareholder of Kryso Resources plc (“Kryso”), a gold exploration and development company which was admitted to trading on AIM in 2004. Kryso was restructured and renamed China Nonferrous Gold Ltd (“CNG”) in 2013. Craig acted as Finance Director and Company Secretary of Kryso before becoming Managing Director in 2010 and stepping down from the board in September 2013. During this period, Kryso/CNG delineated a five million ounce JORC Mineral Resource at the Pakrut gold project in Tajikistan, completed a bankable feasibility study for the project, obtained debt and equity finance for mine development, and commenced construction of the mine and infrastructure.
Since 2013, Craig has continued to act as a consultant to CNG, during which time CNG has successfully obtained additional debt finance in order to commence production, completing the first gold pour at the Pakrut mine in 2015. Prior to his roles with Kryso/CNG, Craig held positions with Gulf International Minerals Ltd and Nelson Gold Ltd, both of which also successfully put gold mines into production during Craig’s tenure.