By Ryan Randazzo, The Republic
In the shadow of major Arizona copper-mining companies are dozens of thinly financed exploration firms hoping to find riches buried beneath the hardscrabble desert.
Exploration mining companies face challenges from finding precious metals in the first place to raising enough money to dig for them once they are located.
Even proceeding that far isn’t a guarantee of success for startup miners, because if things don’t go as planned, they don’t have multinational mining operations to fall back on like the major companies do.
