New gold treasures in Inner Mongolia

A company with the exotic name of King Solomon Mines Ltd is getting prepared for a gold and copper quest, not on author Henry Rider Haggard’s Dark Continent but in China’s Inner Mongolia.

The company decided against seeking a listing on London’s AIM Board or the Venture Board of the Toronto Stock Exchange in favour of the Australian Stock Exchange – as part of a noticeable trend of many Australasian junior companies that now prefer the more staid Australian bourse, rather than the costlier and legally more complex move to London or Canada.

A principal figure in King Solomon is well known New Zealand-based geologist Bruce Bell, who has in recent decades run mining and exploration companies in both Australia and NZ and, for the past seven years, placed his prospecting focus on Inner Mongolia where he selected targets in partnership with local commodities expert Fu La.

Bell told MineWeb that the prospects acquired were enormous targets, and he likened their geological setting to the Cadia gold-copper deposits in New South Wales that are mainstays for Australia’s biggest locally-controlled gold miner, Newcrest Mining Ltd.

There were, he said, very few explorers in Inner Mongolia, though enquiries are flowing in from North American, British and Australian companies. Ivanhoe Mines Ltd’s Robert Friedland has comprehended that big mineral systems in Mongolia do not stop at country boundaries and was securing ground in the area.

The company has just released its prospectus and is seeking to raise $A8 million ($US6.266M) with an over-subscription capacity of a further $A2M ($US1.566M). Stockbrokers in Sydney indicated that the flow of early subscriptions was positive and Bell said there is likely to be a strong investor support from NZ. The float was expected to close early in April.

Joining Bell, who is exploration director, is Stephen McPhail, who worked on a company that Bell ran in the 1990s and spent several years in investment banking in NZ, while other board members include Fu La and John Quinn as chairman. Quinn has had a major role in the Australian gold mining scene, with Newmont Mining, whose Australian offshoot was threatened with takeover by Robert Champion de Crespigny’s Normandy Mining (itself later taken over by Newmont), and first managing director of Newcrest, which fended off de Crespigny and then failed to take over Normandy. Quinn also helped revive Victorian gold miner Perseverance Mining Corporation.

The Inner Mongolian properties include Marmot Ridge, a new copper-anomalous hydrothermal system; Wuritu, a shear-hosted skarn copper project, the Sonid North and Sonid South gold projects and the Amoyitele iron-copper and nickel project.

In the prospectus John Quinn described Marmot Ridge in the Sonid Zuoqui district as a project to have “potential become a world class porphyry copper deposit” and he said early work on Wuritu gave encouragement that King Solomon may have “a second emerging copper project.”

All exploration will be carried out by Inner Mongolia Plate Mining Ltd, which is owned 90% by King Solomon and 10% by local entity Inner Mongolia Ao Men Xin Economic & Trade Co Ltd.

source:www.mineweb.net