
Baobab Resources Plc (LON:BAO) is a mining exploration company with an exclusive focus on Mozambique. It was formed in 2005 to acquire Capitol Resources, a Mozambique-based company, which held 16 exploration licences. These give the company a longer term pipeline of prospects, but right now only two of them are actively being exploited - Mundonguara and Tete, a copper/gold and iron ore prospect respectively.
The copper-gold mine at Mundonguara has a Stage 1 JORC compliant inferred mineral resource - it was asessed at 3.1 mt, 1.4% copper, 0.11g/t gold and 2.1g/t silver [1] . There's a 3km long corridor of mineralisation, giving it significant further exploration potential.
The iron ore prospect at Tete covers two areas, the Massamba Group and Singore. The whole area covers 632 square kilometres. Massamba has five prospects - Chitongue Grande, Pequeno, Caangua, Chimbala and the South Zone - of which Chitongue has been most extensively surveyed, with a 15 diamond drill hole programme last year. Exploration of Massamba is further advanced; work on Singore has started more recently.
Coffey Mining Pty, an independent mining consultancy, has signed off on a maiden inferred mineral resource (JORC compliant) of 47.7 million tons of magnetite-ilmenite for a 500 metre portion of Chitongue Grande, based on last year's drilling programme. That's 500 metres out of a total 8 km strike, so further drilling could well improve the resource figure markedly.
For the broader Massamba Group area, there's no hard evidence yet, so no resource, but Coffey gave an exploration target of 400-700 million tons. That obviously requires a heavy discount to inferred resources to account for exploration risk.
References
[2] Annual results, p5: http://www.baobabresources.com/Announcements/20091130%20Annual%20Results%20and%20Notice%20of%20AGM%202009/Annual%20Results%20Annual%20Report%20Notice%20of%20AGM.pdf
[3] Investor presentation, p 9
[4] Placing announcement, October 2009: http://www.baobabresources.com/Announcements/20091020/Placing.pdf
[5] Fox-Davies Research report, August 2009: www.baobabresources.com/.../Reports/Baobabflashnote10August09.pdf
