Develop (DVP) boss Bill Beament has notably steered clear of hosting investor conference calls on the release of its quarterly exploration and production reports since his arrival at the company four and a half years ago.

He is not the shy type, and has plenty of experience with the quarterly ritual from his days when he took Northern Star (NST) on its journey from a penny dreadful gold stock to a market cap of $14 billion by the time he left.

So it can be said that Beament’s decision this week to come out of his self-imposed quarterly conference call exile for Develop with its base metals, lithium and mining services focus was a signal of some sort.

And it was, indicating as it did that Beament is confident that the dramatic growth in Develop’s market cap since his arrival and recapitalisation of Develop when it was a $50m company going by the name of Venturex Resources is just the start of the story.

Develop is now a $1.83 billion company. And thanks to a combination of its growing operating base and the tailwinds of higher base metals and lithium prices, a Beament ambition to build a $2 billion-plus company is well in hand.

Develop’s Woodlawn copper-zinc project near Goulburn in NSW is ramping up to initial full-scale production in the current quarter and its Sulphur Springs zinc-copper in Western Australia is being prepped for an accelerated entry into production, with zinc prices expected to play catch-up with record copper prices.

On a combined basis, Woodlawn and Sulphur Springs will establish Develop as producer of 50,000tpa of copper-equivalent, making it a copper counter on the ASX in preference to the premium-priced Sandfire with its mines in Africa and Spain.

Develop’s underground mining services business now has two mining services agreements  (Bellevue in WA and Waihi in New Zealand) and Beament wants to make it three. It could be more but the idea is to reserve capability for Develop’s own mining projects.

As Beament noted on the conference call, booming commodity prices meant there was no shortage of tender opportunities.

“You couldn’t get a more favourable market for mining services providers,” he said.

“With gold sitting at $US5180/oz, you could mine the gravel in the car park at the moment and make money out of it, it’s that bloody high,” Beament said, adding that the gold price was so high that every open-cut now had an underground opportunity hanging off it.

Beament also hinted that apart from an additional mining services deal, Develop remained open to additional business and partnership opportunities.

Finally, an opportunity that would not have been expected six months has emerged – the potential for a direct shipping ore development of Develop’s previously parked up Pioneer Dome lithium project in WA thanks to the rebound in lithium prices.

“It would take less than six months to deliver first DSO ore, and I’ll remind you the capital cost of that whole project is about A$35–$40 million to get up and running,” Beament said.

“We have been offered money in term sheets from two very large off takers in the last week,” he said. 

“And when you start understanding what those DSO rates are per tonne … it’s just about as good as gold mining.”

Wildcat/PMT:

It is a feature of the recovery in the lithium market that the downturn can now be seen as a good thing for the developers. There is the obvious benefit of share price recoveries.

But it is also clear that many projects have got better during the battery materials now thawing winter of discontent, setting them up for a bigger and better future.

So when the recovery becomes entrenched after some more ups and downs in pricing – lithium carbonate prices are up by close to 200% since June last year – the projects are going to be all that more robust.

It is a theme that came through in the recent share price upgrades of two developers – Wildcat (WC8) and PMET Resources (PMT) – by Canaccord, not for the improved lithium outlook, which was the case in earlier upgrades, but because the projects have got better during the downturn.

In the case of Wildcat, Canaccord has increased its share price target from 70c to 75c which compares with Wildcat’s 39c market price.

“In light of recent price action, we believe Wildcat is increasingly de-risked to deliver Australia’s next lithium mine (Tabba Tabba in the Pilbara),” Canaccord said.

But its latest price target upgrade was specifically due to its initial $150-$200m value estimation of Wildcat’s recent high-grade Bolt Cutter discovery near Tabba Tabba on an in-situ value basis.

There is potential for Bolt Cutter to lift the overall grade of an integrated mining and processing operation.

High grades in exploration work at the CV13 deposit at PMET’s impossibly named Shaakichiuwaanaan project in Canada were also a factor in Canaccord’s share price target for PMET (formerly Patriot) being increased from 80c to 95c compared with its 72c market price.

Last year’s development study in to the development of Shaakichiuwaanaan was based on the CV5 deposit which is high grade itself. But grades from the Vega zone at CV13 of up to 7% lithium were off the charts. The deposit is also free of lake issues.

While the economics of the CV5 development were found to be robust enough anyway in the development study, Canaccord reckons the likely inclusion of CV13 in an updated production plan leads to the potential for an overall improvement in project economics.

Xpedra:

Mike Haynes is well-known as the veteran geologist who took the formerly listed New World Resources from shell company status to the Arizona copper success story which was taken over last year for $245 million.

It was a 7 year journey for NWC, much of it spent being unrecognised by the ASX market until the bidding war broke out for the company on the strength of its high-grade Antler project, and at a time when the copper price was beginning its assault on record levels.

Haynes is now out for a repeat performance with his new vehicle being a little thing previously known as Thunderbird but now called Xpedra (XPD).

Antimony/gold in NSW’s New England region and free carried Canadian uranium exploration exposure continue on in Xpedra and themselves go a long way to underpinning its $13.8m market cap at 2.4c a share.

But the near term interest in the stock is a gold project Haynes brough with him to Xpedra – the Springfield project near Gulong in central NSW.

Limited historic drilling  – it was last drilled 27 years ago – by names like Newmont, Sabminco and Endeavour intersected thick and high mineralisation (27m at 3.65g/t from surface) in mainly shallow drilling.

Xpedra is now ready to go with its maiden drilling program in mid-February after securing  an access agreement for the farmland site and has the drilling contractor booked in.

Needless to say that a $13.8m company drilling for gold at an overlooked but relatively advanced gold exploration project, at a time of record Aussie prices of more than $7,800/oz, can expect a leveraged share price response to success with the drill bit.