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Lemur Resources, Caledonia Mining, Stratex Int, Conroy Gold & Natural Resources news briefs

Contributed by Fox-Davies Capital

Lemur Resources has now received the final 7 core samples from the Western Drilling Programme at its Imaloto Coal Project. The final results indicate that a primary product with a 67% yield could be produced with a secondary product suitable for a domestic coal fire power station giving a total theoretical yield of 100%. The company has now received the Port and Land Logistics and the Mining Scoping studies and expects the mining scoping study to be completed once the update resource estimate has been calculated at the end of month.

Caledonia Mining Corp has released another good production update from the Blanket Mine in Zimbabwe as production continues to improve as grades and recoveries improved. During the 3Q'12 the mine produced 12,919oz Au, a 33% increase on gold production in 3Q'11 (9,743oz) and a 12% increase on gold production in 2Q'12 (11,560oz). Total gold production YTD is now 33,643oz, a 33% increase over the gold production in the first nine months 2011 (25,331oz). We expect grades to trend lower during the 4Q'12, but throughput to remain above the targeted 1ktpd. The 3Q results are expected on or before November 15, 2012 which we expect to show an improvement over 1H'12 due to the improvement in grades and recoveries, but also due to several non-recurring consumables including shaft ropes impacting 1Q'12 cash costs.

Stratex Int PLC has received an independent review of the feasibility study of the Inlice project 45% owned by Stratex and 55% by its Turkish partner NTF Insaat Ticaret Ltd Sti ("NTF"). The review by UK engineering consultancy firm GBM Minerals Engineering Consultants Limited suggests increasing the processing rate from 1,000tpd to 2,000 tpd, thereby reducing the minelife from 4 to 2 years. The company believes that the project economics are significantly improved with the all equity, post-tax IRR substantially increased to 178% based on US$1,397/oz gold price and the NPV10 increasing to US$17.5M. Although there remains potential for extension of the resource to include non-oxide resources, we would be concerned that there would not be sufficient reserves to cope with any technical issues during commissioning of the plant and mining.

Conroy Gold & Natural Resources has identified two new gold targets at Slieve Glah through a 900 sample soil programme. The new targets are each over 3k in length, with one area returning gold values of between 4 ppb Au to over 300ppb Au measuring 1,000m by 500m. Through the programme two existing gold targets at Slieve Glah have been enlarged. The gold in soil targets identified by the soil sampling survey appear to be structurally controlled and occur as a series of right angle zones adjacent to the Orlock Bridge Fault, a major sinistral fault believed to be an influencing factor on mineralisation in the region.