Mincor Resources is the largest producer in the Kambalda nickel province, having acquired and revived a series of operations previously owned by WMC.

Far from resting on its laurels, managing director David Moore said the company was definitely growth-orientated.

The 2010-11 exploration budget is $15 million.

"Kambalda does take a lot of ongoing investment but we have a very strong business there, so we're going to continue to grow Kambalda," Moore said.

"Even after 40 years we can still come up with these really big conceptual targets at Kambalda which, if they come right, will be company-changing events.

"As another leg to our growth strategy, we've got these copper and gold projects, and we're looking to acquire more."

In the current quarter, the company is pushing ahead with expansions and ramp-ups of its nickel mines.

The Miitel mine, which has been on care-and-maintenance for 18 months, has been recommissioned.

This year Mincor's forecast production is 13,500-14,500 tonnes of nickel-in-ore.

"It's not a stellar in the sense that our Mariners mine is 12 months away from getting down to this really high-grade material in the N10 orebody and our McMahon mine is in the development phase and that will start production at the end of the financial year," Moore said.

"So next year we'll see another lift, where production rises this year from last year's just under 12,000t, to north of 15,000t next year.

"There's a nice near-termgrowth profile there in terms of actual production."

The exploration potential at Kambalda also is impressive.

"What excites us most at the moment is the various exploration plays that we've got underway both in Kambalda and also outside Kambalda," Moore said.

"The top one in terms of our total upside potential would be our ultra-size nickel orebody target in north Kambalda, which we've talked about before, we call them USNOBs.

The company is drilling from the Otter Juan decline, outside of known Otter Jaun mineralisation.

"We're drilling holes into what must be the most prospective piece of basal contact in Australia," Moore said.

"It's on that eastern side of the Kambalda dome, which has hosted 600,000t of nickel.

"The holes are long and hard to drill, but we think that we're on to an ore system.



"It's got the right geological characteristics and we will be making intersections in the basal contact in the coming months."

The company is also doing in-mine geophysics work in north Kambalda, to provide further indications of where to drill.

"It's a rabbit warren of workings down there and a lot of it is quite close to the prospective basal contact, so the in-mine geophysics is a big test of these nickel sulfide orebodies, which are really quite small, so it's easy to miss them with drilling," Moore said.

"This is the first time this sort of work has been done on our holdings, so it's quite exciting."

Moore expects Mincor will make a substantial discovery.

"If we did make the kind of discovery we're after there, it would be better than 100,000t of nickel in one big high-grade orebody, which would give us a whole whole new source of nickel and a long-term mine," he said.

Other Kambalda targets for the company include Miitel.

"We've made some breakthrough discoveries there over the past 12 months, in terms of what happens to the ore system as it extends out the north and south," Moore said.

"We are pursuing that vigorously at the moment with two rigs.

"These are surface drill rigs looking to extend and move this very strong ore system. They're quite deep holes, they take a bit of time, but it is looking very good and we're making substantial discoveries."

Earlier this year, Mincor released results from step-out drilling at south Miitel, which confirmed the potential for substantial resource extensions.

Results inluded 6.06 metres at 3.31% nickel and 22.9m at 3.14% nickel.

The company said the intercepts showed potential to at least double the strike length of the N29 orebody.

And at the Mariners mine, Mincor is testing the depths of known mineralisation.

"From December to January we'll be drilling some more deep underground holes to try and flesh out what is an emerging discovery that we're calling the N11, to follow our previous discoveries of N09 and N10," Moore said.

"We've got one or two holes down below with intersections in what we think is the N11 orebody.

"But with two holes it's only a start, so from January we'll be in a position with the decline to start putting out some deep holes to see if we can turn this in to another significant ore zone at Mariners."

Heading south, Mincor owns gold ground in a very prospective neighbourhood.

The Lake Cowan project, which the company purchased a few years ago, is located between the Norseman and Higginsville gold mines.

An air-core program was completed at the project before work was postponed during the global financial crisis.

Geochemical anomalies in bedrock below the lake sediment were identified.

A follow up air-core and diamond drilling campaign began in October.

"The diamond drilling will further test these anomalies and the air-core will try to fill in and extend them," Moore said.

At Tottenham, the geographical centre of New South Wales, Mincor owns a prospective copper project.

"We picked it up some time ago and stopped working during the GFC, but prior to that we had drilled out a small resource of copper oxide; near-surface and weathered," Moore said.

Mincor identified a resource of 3.7 million tonnes, grading 1.1% copper.

"That's a little bit too small, we need twice that," Moore said.

"But that's only the oxide zone and down below you would think there's an underlying sulfide orebody.

"We've flown airborne electromagnetics, which picks up sulfides, and we've got numerous EM targets scattered all around the area, many of them are down-plunge from the oxides."

The company initiated a diamond drilling program at Tottenham in November.

So with many exciting growth prospects around the corner, Mincor is preparing to cement its position as a premier nickel mining company.

At the same time it is proving up its gold and copper potential.

With gold and copper's performance over recent months, it is not at all surprising that Moore is bullish about Mincor's future.

The company is debt-free and has had 10 years of profitable mining, most recently posting annual net profit after tax of $28.1 million.

"Mincor has a proven management team that's

delivered for more than 10 years," he said.

"We're a company that makes profits and pays dividends.

"It's very rare to have all that in a company, as well as this tremendous exploration upside."

Mincor represents the best of both worlds; a junior exploration company, or an investment which is self-funded from its own cashflows and pays dividends.

* This report, first published in the November/December 2010 edition of RESOURCESTOCKS magazine, was commissioned by Mincor Resources