Like mineral sands through the hour glass, so zircon looks set to give investors some of the best days of their lives.
There has been nowhere to hide in recent weeks in the mining space, with both base and precious metals letting the side down.
But there is a happy bunch of mining investors out there. They’re the ones that in the back-half of last year picked up that the ever-opaque mineral sands sector was in recovery mode after five years of misery.
Zircon in particular has been a star performer among the full suite of commodities.
For a while there, the king of the ASX mineral sand stocks, Iluka (ILU), was strutting its stuff on the back of mineral sand price increases and was very much the go-to stock.
But then its share price came unstuck on a number of issues related to its near-$500m acquisition two years ago of what was an otherwise well-timed deal in Sierra Leone.
Poor old Iluka. The interest here though is in the bunch of juniors which thanks to some hard work and a dose of good luck, are poised to capitalise on the return of strong demand and prices for mineral sands, particularly for zircon.
While Iluka’s share price is not in a happy space at the moment, mineral sand developers such as Sheffield (SFX), Strandline (STA) and Image (IMA) have been beacons in an otherwise depressed mining sector.
Still, it is best to let Iluka as the sector leader give a feel for what has been going on with demand and prices.
Both are benefitting from looming supply shortages because of under-investment during the tough times, ongoing resource depletion and supply-side disruption like that at Rio Tinto’s mega big Richards Bay operation in South Africa. Read more +
