Thor Mining shares boosted by update on gold and rare earth assets

Thor Mining (LON: THR, ASX:THR) shares were up around 8 percent in afternoon deals after the publishing of its quarterly update, in which it reflected on progress at the Dundas gold project.
Final assays from initial sampling has identified clusters of elevated gold values, and include five previously unknown gold anomalies.

“The best of these contain the greatest concentration of high gold values encountered in the project to date,” Thor said.

The company has increased its interest in Dundas and it has been actively exploring the project during the three months ended 30 September 2010.
Thor upped its stake in Dundas from 51 percent to 60 percent, after it issued 45 million Chess Depositary Interests (CDI) - tax efficient securities on the Australian Securities Exchange - to the vendors.

Ultimately it can acquire the entire project at its option, subject to successful exploration results.

On the ground Thor is preparing to start drilling, on targets identified by the sampling. Drilling is expected to get underway in the December quarter.

The company also updated investors on its other assets, most notably in relation to the Daicos rare earth prospect in Australia’s Northern Territory.

Thor said that increasing rare earth commodity prices has prompted it to re-evaluate Daicos.

Previously, reconnaissance sampling returned high uranium and rare earth element (REE) values from very radioactive samples.

The best assay had 19.37 percent uranium, 26.52 percent Niobium, 6.25 percent Tantalum and 2.68 percent Yttrium.

Thor also noted that the improvement in tungsten prices is encouraging for the Molyhil tungsten-molybdenum project.

Molyhil’s development is currently on-hold in anticipation of a recovery in Tungsten and Molybdenum prices.

The company noted that the Tungsten price continued to increase and the Molybdenum price has tracked sideways.

However the recent strengthening of the Australian dollar has had a negative impact.

“The fundamental drivers of the project are sound and that prices will in time recover to economic levels leading to the development of Molyhil,” Thor said. 

Furthermore Thor emphasised that it has enhanced the project while it is on hold, as it has identified operating and capital cost reductions.

On a corporate level the company raised A$1.143 million with the issue of 93,336,149 new shares. It also raised a further A$912,000 in the current period.