News

July 23, 2010

Ariana Can Get Back To Exploration Now That It Has A Turkish Construction Company With Metallurgical Expertise As A Development Partner

By Charles Wyatt

For investors, it is usually a wise strategy never to accept a joint venture for what it appears to be until it is actually a completed agreement. So often there are there are little changes round the edges that can end up altering the final deal in a way that makes it totally different from the original. And for junior mining companies the best advice is never to enter such a deal when it is based purely on promises of funding. Unless a potential partner brings something positive to the party in terms of development expertise, metals marketing or specialist technology, as well as money, it is sometimes best forgotten. Promises of money blow away in the wind when the going gets hard, and the poor junior ends up with very little of its original project. With that in mind, it’s interesting to see that Ariana Resources, the Aim-traded Turkish gold explorer, has brought a very useful partner into its Red Rabbit project in western Turkey on a 50:50 basis. The partner is Proccea, a young Turkish company based in Ankara, but with branches in Cyprus, Algeria, Georgia and Afghanistan.

Proccea brings project development experience to the deal. In the past it’s worked on a range of projects, from the development of gold processing plants to designing and building major hotels. The mining services are provided by a specialist subsidiary called CH Engineering which can design and build processing plants. CH has experience of heap leach, carbon-in-leach and carbon-in-pulp processes on gold and silver projects, and it can demonstrate practical proof of success at Eldorado’s...