Thor Mining PLC (AIM, ASX: THR): Interview with Mick Billing, Executive Chairman, Advanced Shovel-Ready, Fully-Permitted Tungsten/Molybdenum Molyhil Project, Gold and Lithium Exploration projects
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By Dr. Allen Alper, PhD Economic Geology and Petrology, Columbia University, NYC, USA
on 7/17/2017
Thor Mining PLC (AIM, ASX: THR) is an exploration and development company, with an advanced shovel-
ready, fully-permitted tungsten/molybdenum Molyhil project in Northern territory of Australia. The
company's second tungsten project, the Pilot Mountain project in Nevada, USA, is shaping up to be a much
larger resource with lower operating costs. In addition, Thor has an early stage gold project in Western
Australia, and they just acquired interest in a very early stage lithium project with tenements in
Arizona and New Mexico. We learned from Mick Billing, Executive Chairman of Thor Mining that they will be
drilling the Pilot Mountain and their new lithium project in Arizona this year. In a couple of weeks they
expect the drill results from the gold project in Western Australia, so there will be lots of news flow
over the next few months. According to Mr. Billing, we are heading into a time where tungsten prices will
improve, and Thor is ready to bring Molyhil into production at the first uptick in tungsten prices.
Thor Mining PLC
Dr. Allen Alper: This is Dr. Allen Alper, Editor-in-Chief of Metals News, interviewing Mick
Billing, who is executive chairman of Thor Mining PLC. I was wondering if you could give our
readers/investors an overview of Thor Mining.
Mr. Mick Billing: Yes certainly, Allen, Thor is in the tungsten space, we have a project in
the Northern territory of Australia called Molyhil, which we believe is shovel-ready. It has a six year
mine life, would produce roughly a 1,000 to 1,500 tons of contained WO3 tungsten trioxide a year for six
years at a capital cost of $40 million US to bring that into production. It probably needs a slightly
higher tungsten price than we currently have, but we believe the fundamentals of tungsten is such that
that price will be achieved in the not too distant future.
Our second project - and probably our larger and more exciting tungsten project is Pilot Mountain
in Nevada in the United States. Pilot Mountain is perhaps at an earlier stage than Molyhil, but it is
shaping up to be a much larger resource, and we expect it will end up being cheaper to operate and could
have something like a 20 plus year mine life. It currently has a resource of about 11 million tons at
about just under .3% tungsten trioxide, but it also has some fairly attractive credits from copper,
silver, and zinc. We've done some work in the last year or so, some drilling programs, and we have
expanded the resource. We have another drilling program scheduled for late July, early August this year
and we expect that the resource will continue to grow. Fifteen to twenty million tons is not at all out
of the question and perhaps beyond that.
Thor Mining PLC
We've also done sufficient metallurgical test work to know we can produce a saleable scheelite fuel-likes
concentrate and a saleable concentrate of copper and silver. Our predecessors also did some work to
demonstrate that they could produce a saleable zinc concentrate as well. So we know we can produce a
product, or a collection of products that can be sold and would be attractive to the market, and we
suspect that our cost will be at a reasonable level. We believe this is going to be a very exciting
project with quite a useful mine life.
We also have a gold project in Western Australia, which is relatively early stage and like any
exploration project, may develop over time. We've just finished a drilling program there and waiting on
assays and we look forward to the results of those. Finally we've just announced the acquisition of an
interest in a lithium project at very early stage with tenements in Arizona and New Mexico.
Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds exciting. Sounds like you’re doing a lot of very interesting, very
good things.
Mr. Mick Billing: Well, we hope so. Our core business is still tungsten and we expect it to
remain so, but gold is of interest. The lithium project has sufficient grade for us to believe there is
potential for a viable mining operation at some stage, but there is lots and lots of work to do. We'll be
drilling at Pilot Mountain - the tungsten project in Nevada - in just over a month's time. We hope to be
drilling the lithium project sometime during the course of the next half year, so there'll be at least
two drilling programs between now and the end of 2017.
Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds exciting. I noticed in May you announced that your Pilot Mountain
project had an increase of 55% in the resource.
Mr. Mick Billing: Yes we did. That was partially in response to the results of a drilling
program we conducted in February and March, where we were able to confirm the drilling results achieved
by Union Carbide in the 1970s at the Garnet deposit. Pilot Mountain is made up of four deposits, each a
mile or so from one another. There are two to the East heading into the basin known as Desert Scheelite
and Good Hope, and two slightly higher up the hill known as Garnet and Good Hope. We've had a resource
estimate on the Desert Scheelite deposit for a number of years and this year we drilled the Garnet
deposit.
Thor Mining PLC
We had all the logs and the essay results from the Union Carbide work of the 1970s. Unfortunately we
didn't have the core or the cuttings from those drill programs, which are required if you want a JORC or
a 43-101 report to have any credibility. We had to drill those again, but we weren't drilling blind. We
were essentially twinning old holes to verify that the very work done by Union Carbide back then was
valid and could produce the evidence required by way of core and cuttings from the drilling program to
allow us to declare that resource.
We've done that and at the same time we re-evaluated the results from the Desert Scheelite
project several years ago. We've re-assessed the cut-off grade of the mineralization for resource
estimation purposes and managed to increase the tonnage at the Desert Scheelite deposit without impacting
very much on the grade. We are now progressing to drill the third of those four deposits in just over a
month's time - the one we call Good Hope. That doesn't have a lot of historical drilling. I think there's
only three or four holes in it, but there are a number of adits and shafts from historical mining -
probably from the 1940s - and lots of copper staining around the entrance to those openings. We're quite
hopeful that while Good Hope may not be a very large resource from historical records, it appears to be
relatively high grade and we're pretty keen on testing that. At the same time we will go back and try to
add a little bit onto the Garnet resource having identified some - what we would call - hanging fruit.
Thor Mining PLC
Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds very good. Could you tell our readers/investors a bit about your
background and your board?
Mr. Mick Billing: I'm an accountant if you dig deep enough, but I've been in this industry
since 1974, so not as young as some. I have a board of mining industry professionals. One of my co-
directors, Dave Thomas, is a mining engineer. He's been doing this sort of thing for a bit over 50 years,
operating some very large mines, some small mines, underground and open cut. He’s tremendously well-
experienced and he helps us out in mine planning. A recent addition to the board is a chap called
Alastair Middleton, a geologist who has spent a lot of time in South Africa and the UK doing mining work
and doing mine evaluation work as a mine geologist and also, subsequently in the UK, in the merchant
banking business.
We have a couple of other guys, who are essentially finance types, one out of Sydney, ex-banking
environment, and Paul Johnson in London who keeps us in touch with the market and market activities in
the UK, where we raise most of our money and where most of the trading in our stock takes place.
Dr. Allen Alper: It sounds like you have a very strong team, very experienced. Could you tell our
readers/investors a little bit about your capital structure?
Mr. Mick Billing: We are listed on the AIM market in London and also ASX in Australia. We
have 370 million shares trading at about a penny, depending on which day we trade. Sometimes a little
above and sometimes a little below. Our market capitalization is of the order of 3.7 million English
pounds. In US dollars I guess that's 4.5 million dollars or thereabout if I do a quick conversion. Don't
hold me to that, but I'm relatively confident of the number in pounds.
We have recently agreed on terms for a placement, where we will issue about another 50 million
shares at .9 of a penny and raise 460,000 pounds. Myself and one other director are contributing to that.
Between us putting in about 70,000 pounds and we already have, probably in sterling terms, a bit over
half-a-million pounds in the kitty right now, so after that we will have a bit over a million pounds in
the kitty - which is not a lot of money, but it's certainly enough to fund the work that we propose to do
over the next six months or so.
Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds good. What are the primary reasons our high-net-worth
readers/investors should consider investing in Thor Mining?
Mr. Mick Billing: I think there are a couple of key drivers for investment in the next
little while, Allen. One is that there will be news flow over the next few months. We will be drilling at
Pilot Mountain and we will be drilling deposits - about which there is some knowledge - not blue sky
work. We will also drill at the lithium project, particularly the Big Sandy project in Arizona. Lithium
is a pretty hot commodity right now, and while time will tell whether this is an economic deposit or not,
what we're seeing at surface and what we're seeing from the cliffs of what we will be drilling into says
that we will be intersecting lithium. We want to confirm the sorts of grades and the extent as you move
away from those cliffs. We're looking forward to drill results from the gold project in Western
Australia. We finished drilling there several weeks ago and assays are a couple of weeks away, so there's
lots of news flow.
We're also - we believe - heading into a time where tungsten prices will improve a bit. There is,
I think, a quite high prospect of our Molyhil project securing finance to go into production, because the
40 million dollar capital cost for it to bring Molyhil into production is not a huge number. It's
relatively modest and the operating costs we have on this project - which is fully permitted by the way -
are very low compared with a bunch of the competition, also trying to get projects financed. So we think
we are keenly placed to bring Molyhil into production at the first uptick in tungsten prices and we have
lots of news flow from exploration.
Thor Mining PLC
Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds excellent. Is there anything else you'd like to add, Mick?
Mr. Mick Billing: Allen, I think we've covered the major issues. I thank you very much for
your time and the opportunity to talk to you and your readers/investors.
Dr. Allen Alper: I enjoyed talking with you very much, very interesting. I know
our readers/investors will feel the same way.
http://www.thormining.com/
Mick Billing
Executive Chairman
+61 8 7324 1935
corporate@thormining.com
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