Takeover approach shakes up potash market

Canpotex held a ground breaking ceremony at the railcar maintenance and staging facility located south of Potash Corp’s Lanigan mine on Friday. In business since 1972, Canpotex is the exclusive offshore marketing company for the three big provincial Saskatchewan potash players and maintains a fleet of 5,000 specialty railcars for its customers in about 30 countries around the world.

Trading Room reports that Melbourne-based Fortis Mining Ltd has agreed to raise $236m by selling new shares and notes to investors in Hong Kong and China to buy and develop two potash mines in Kazakhstan. ASX-listed Fortis, previously a gold and base metal explorer, acquired the rights to purchase the Chelkarskaya and Zhilyanskoe salt deposits in March. The deposits have an exploration target range of 6.5 – 6.6bn tonnes of potassium making them amongst the largest potash salt deposits in the world.

Canada's Allana Potash Corp said drilling results showed that the potential of its Dallol project in Ethiopia could be extended beyond the original resource estimate, helping its shares pare some of their losses. Shares of the potash explorer, which were down as much as six percent midday before the news, recovered to trade down two percent at C$1.70 on the Toronto Venture Exchange. More than 2.5 million shares were traded by late afternoon.

Vulcan Minerals Inc. ("the Company")(TSX VENTURE:VUL) is pleased to announce its intention to undertake a corporate re-organization whereby the Company will spin-out certain of its mineral exploration assets into a separate publicly traded subsidiary company (NewCo). These assets consist of the mineral rights in the Bay St. George basin of western Newfoundland where the Company has discovered the Captain Cook potash deposit. The Captain Cook potash discovery was made with a core hole in 2002 and consists of a 5 meter gross interval grading up to 20.40% potassium oxide (K20) at a depth of 287 meters. It occurs in rocks which are geologically similar to those containing the Sussex potash mine in New Brunswick operated by the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan. (Visit www.vulcanminerals.ca for further information.)

Allana Potash Corp. (TSX VENTURE:AAA) ("Allana" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has further extended the potential of its Dallol deposit with the completion of additional drilling and assay activity in areas beyond those included in the original resource estimate completed in 2008. This work is part of the upcoming update to Allana's National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") technical report. Drill hole DK-11-15 ("Hole 15") has intersected significant potash mineralization up to 52.40% KCl over 0.80 metres. Hole 15 intersected two strong zones of potash mineralization which appear to correlate with the Sylvinite Zone and Kainitite Zone.

Exploration junior Mesa Exploration Corp. hopes to kick off a drilling program soon at its potash project in Utah after filing a positive technical report in May. The property is adjacent to the Cane Creek mine where potash has been mined for 45 years. Listed on the TSX Venture Exchange with a market cap just shy of $10m and only 12.6m shares outstanding, Mesa recently changed its name from Mesa Uranium Corp. to reflect its broader exploration focus which include among others its flagship Green Energy Project, a large brine deposit containing 40% dissolved solids, also in Utah.

On the same day the premiers of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia toured a potash mine in Penobsquis, NB's mining commissioner began hearing from residents of a nearby town who blame the mine, operated by Potash Corp. for a loss of 60 water wells about six years ago. The mining company initially provided the residents with bottled water, but the provincial government has since installed a municipal water system.

Motley Fool puts Saskatchewan’s Potash Corp. through the Warren Buffet test this week. Ilian Moscovitz of the investment site rates the world’s biggest fertilizer manufacturer in terms of the criteria – consistent earnings, good management and a simple business among others -- laid out by the legendary investor in Berkshire Hathaway's most recent annual results filing. There is renewed interest from investors in Potash Corp., which operates six mines in the Canadian province, on the back of rising global food prices, record earnings at the company, and after BHP Billiton’s nearly $40bn hostile takeover bid was scuppered by the federal government in November last year.

Encanto Potash Corp said it is on track to meet its target of doubling resources at its flagship Saskatchewan project after a First Nation council transfers mineral rights to Canada, sending the company's shares up 18 percent in afternoon trade. Encanto, which explores and develops potash properties, expects further drilling at its Muskowekwan property to commence after a referendum by First Nation on transferring the mineral rights on the reserved land to Canada.