Red Rock (LON:RRR) announced on 3rd March that the company had a sign an agreement with North Atlantic Mining Associates Limited ("NAMA") for a two month option to enter into an earn-in with NAMA over exploration concessions at Thule, Greenland. Iron Ore, has seen its prices rise substantially in recent years to levels of around $180 per tonne and recent transactions, such as Mittal's Baffinland acquisition, will only reinforce its appeal. But given the Company's current gold focus and its accelerated developments in precious metals, both operationally and through its investment portfolio, this move back into Iron Ore came as somewhat of a surprise to many investors who, like us were keen to learn more of the rationale behind this move. We therefore took the opportunity to ask Andrew Bell to expand on the company's announcement and here is what he had to say:
MM: Could you outline the potential significance of this transaction and why, specifically, you found the NAMA Greenland Limited exploration concessions an attractive proposition?
AB: We are just returning from time in Copenhagen at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland and with our Icelandic partners. Our conviction that these are the stand-out iron ore prospects in Greenland has been reinforced by the views of those we met. We are very lucky. In what will amount we think to about 900 sq km of exploration ground there are so many BIFs and so many iron occurrences noted that when we reflect that even a kilometre or two of good grades can be enough to make a project, we are quite excited. Our ground is by the coast on deep fjords, so the transport issue is minimised. There is haematite and magnetite recorded, extensive mapping, and a little geophysics, but there has been no iron ore exploration. The ground lies along the same Committee Belt trend that comes up through Nunavut and the northern part of Baffin Island and into Greenland before disappearing under the ice sheets. With the recent bidding war for Baffinland Iron and its Mary River project, acquired last month by the Mittal/EMG consortium for $600m, this belt is in the news. As Bloomberg wrote on January 27, in an article entitled "An Iron Ore Rush Above the Arctic Circle", "Canada is the next resource battleground" for iron ore. But in terms of tax, permitting, native rights,…
