Topic: How To Invest

Pat: Your views on DNI Metals, please. It’s very early stage but uses an interesting technology to extract minerals.

Article Excerpt

DNI Metals, $0.52, symbol DNI on Toronto (Shares outstanding: 67.9 million; Market cap: $35.3 million; www.dnimetals.com), aims to produce a number of metals from its Alberta Black Shale project, located about 900 kilometres north of Calgary. These metals include molybdenum, nickel, uranium, vanadium, zinc, copper, cobalt, plus specialty metals (scandium, lithium and thorium). Traditional mining methods won’t work on black shale rock, so the company will use a process called bioleaching to remove the metals. Using this process, DNI will dig up the ore, pile it onto a leaching pad and irrigate it with a solution containing certain bacteria. The tiny organisms then “chew up” the rock and expel the metals as waste. The metals are then piped into a refinery and separated. In nature, bioleaching is triggered spontaneously by micro-organisms in the presence of air and water. Commercial technologies modify this process so the metal can be recovered faster. On December 31, 2011, DNI held cash of $2.7 million, or $0.04 a share…