Good results from Altona Mining might not go deep enough

Good drilling results is likely to support Altona Mining (AOH) this morning with the junior reporting high grade copper and gold finds at its Kylylahti project in Finland.

Altona said the upper zone of its Kylylahti deposit was found to be thicker, extend deeper and held significantly better copper grades than initially thought. The latest drilling found 4% copper at 14.8 meters and 16.1 grams a tonne of gold at 11 meters.

Further, the deeper zone has been extended 10-30 meters and is now believed to overlap the upper zone deposit. Grades are similar to initial expectations at around 2.3% of copper, but the resource is much thicker than the original forecast.

Altona’s Finnish mine is already in production and is so far performing ahead of expectations. However, the main game is still its Roseby project in Mt Isa, Queensland.

Xstrata walked away from Roseby earlier this year and the stock has halved to 14 cents since. Roseby is a larger scale project, but Altona needs around $320 million to bring it to life and it doesn’t have the firepower to do this on its own.

While there is speculation that Minmetals Group might be keen on partnering the junior, that has so far failed to materialise and volatile conditions in the sector has made funding deals a challenging proposition for any mining junior.

Altona is part of the Uncapped 100.