Posted By Byron King On March 6, 2013 @ 3:22pm
"Moving back to el Norte, and speaking of the U.S., I had a long talk with the team from Ucore
Rare Metals (UCU: TSX-V). It’s a fascinating parallel, how much the “Russian” play and this
“American” play are following similar pathways.
Again, with Ucore, we’ve had share price weakness. But the company itself is in great shape, and making excellent progress. Everything today is better than a year or two ago.
The ore body, at Bokan Mountain, Alaska, is well mapped. Prudently, Ucore quit spending money on drilling, last year. “We have plenty of mine life,” said COO Ken Collison. “Now we have to buckle down and build a mine.”
Indeed, there are vast areas, on the same, mineralized trends at Bokan, that will likely add decades to the Ucore play. But that’s work for another day.
The Bokan mineralogy is well understood, along with processes for bringing the rare earth
materials into a concentrated form. The solid phase extraction (SPE) techniques, pioneered by
Ucore’s partners, are ready to translate into a pilot plant stage. Likely by 2014, the plant will be up and running, processing ore on a routine basis.
And within a matter of months, Ucore will kick off construction of its pilot plant, to prove-up the
overall reactions and systems, and generate material. There’s work to be done, but it’s all moving.
I should note that the Alaska reception is splendid. There’s excellent political support from Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich, plus Gov. Sean Parnell. And Alaska is “small” enough — socially — that everyone (sort of) knows everybody else’s business. The Ucore people all tell stories of how they talk with friendly supporters every time they walk through the airport at Ketchikan, Juneau and Anchorage. (“When is that plant going to start running? You hiring yet?”)
Meanwhile, Ucore has people working on downstream processing and sales pathways, where the cash register rings. There’s plenty to know about this critical phase, but almost all of it is
competition-sensitive. Suffice to say that I’m satisfied that Ucore management has no grass
growing beneath its feet..."
ucore.com/ByronKing_March6_2013.pdf
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