A £100mln plus market cap as Empire Metals takes stock of its Pitfield potential

Описание: News that Empire Metals (LON:EEE) has ‘exceptional’ high purity titanium dioxide was one reason shareholders were pleased; the other was that the accompanying double digit increase in the stock propelled the company over the one hundred-million-pound market cap milestone.

What Empire has is a product that has negligible impurities. Managing Director Shaun Bunn says the 99.25% purity is ‘remarkable’ and an ‘extraordinary achievement’ particularly as it might sets a new benchmark for the pigment industry if the company chooses to sell its material to the paint and pigment sector.

This latest news is, Bunn says, just the tip of the iceberg, and he and the board are now taking stock of the titanium ore body at its Pitfield Project in Australia previously described as ‘the biggest thing on the planet.' They are assessing the other applications that can be gleaned from their discovery.

As the world ‘tools up’ with armaments and there is heightened focus on national security and defence systems, titanium metal has become more desirable as a much-needed material.

It is therefore excellent timing that the drill rigs are on site at Empire’s exploration target which is the size of 250 Wembley Stadiums.

“We’re drilling out what I believe could be the world’s largest mineral resource estimate,” says Bunn. He’s talking about titanium and adds “We’re going for number one and if we get that, that’s going to really set us apart from, well, I won’t even say peers, but we’ll be differently the outlier in the industry.”

The industry ‘big boys’ and Empire’s peers are no doubt just a little jealous about what Empire has, and this drill campaign over an eleven square kilometre grid is going to be scrutinised by the many including Australia’s Federal government which has established a four and a half billion-dollar critical minerals fund.

As Shaun explains to Sarah Lowther in this video interview the vision now is “to come back to the market with, what I believe, is the top mineral resource estimate for titanium. That’s my objective and we’re going to come back with a plan of how that then translates to a mine plan, through to a high-grade, high-value product that could be in excess of 100 years of mining.”