Empire Metals (LON: EEE) share price is up 8% in London today and there's not much driving that if we're to be fair about it. Empire has released its final report but there's little there that we didn't already know.They're concentrating on Pitfield, they've enough cash to do that exploration work. There is, of course, no revenue so, well, what else is there to say?
Well, we'd come back to what we said when that Pitfield titanium was last discussed. Which is that it's interesting, in a way, but not exactly value changing.
The results: “Confirmed discovery of a new emerging "Giant" mineral system at the Pitfield Project which has been found to host titanium mineralisation of globally significant size and grade in addition to widespread anomalous copper values. Titanium rich mineralisation (between 4% and 10% TiO2) was identified in all but one of 21 holes drilled, starting at or very near surface and with nearly a quarter of the holes still ending in high TiO2 values of up to 154 metres depth.” Which is all very nice of course. But as we said when first announced, not hugely value transformative.
Empire Metals share price from London Stock Exchange.
That huge uptick there is the announcement of the titanium. But note how it also fades away almost immediately. For, sad to say, titanium in the ground just really isn't very valuable. As we said about Empire:
“Titanium's a perfectly respectable metal to go mining for but it's not all that valuable. We tend to think of titanium metal, which is, but that's because the metal is difficult and energy intensive to make from the oxide. The oxide is worth hundreds of $ per tonne - which is why we can afford for the major global usage to be the white in white paint. There are plenty of places - usually mineral sands operations - that it's possible to get ilmenite, rutile and so on from which titanium can be extracted. We could, if we like, therefore value Empire Metals as if it has just found a mineral sands deposit. Which would be nice but isn't, actually, all that terribly exciting.”
And that is about it. If that titanium were ilmenite (a perfectly respectable ore for titanium dioxide production) then it would be valued at, once mined, maybe $100 a tonne. Certainly in the low hundreds per tonne and no more.
Empire Metals might well find other things of great interest in that mineralisation. It may not of course. But the reason there's not great excitement over a titanium find is because this stage, this type, of titanium just isn't very valuable.