Stockhead’s In-Case-You-Missed-It highlights some strongest performing ASX stocks that might have slipped your notice today. 

It’s a short, sharp update to help frame the trading day by showing some of the biggest movers in percentage terms.

 

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Stocks highlighted in green have made market-moving announcements (click headings to sort).

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WA1 Resources (ASX:WA1) has flagged absurdly high-grade niobium drill hits at the West Arunta project in remote WA including a highlight 13m at 5% Nb2O5, within an overall interval of 31m at 3.5% Nb2O5.

There are three or so major niobium mines in the world; two are ‘high grade’ (between 1% and 2.5% ore grade), while the third sits around 0.5%.

“Drilling at Luni has quickly consolidated a shallow and extremely high-grade mineralised envelope by stepping out on a broad 200m spacing,” WA1 MD Paul Savich said.

“Luni continues to demonstrate the potential to host a globally significant deposit of one of the world’s most critical raw materials.

“Our reconnaissance drilling, along with detailed planning for other activities including resource definition and metallurgical test work, are ongoing with further assays due in the coming weeks.”

Ferroniobium (~65% Nb), the primary saleable form of niobium, is used in steelmaking to boost strength and add corrosion/heat resistance. The company says 300g of niobium can reduce the weight of steel in a mid-size car by 200kg increasing fuel efficiency by 5%.

It currently sells for ~US$45,000/t.

Automaker Stellantis — which owns the Opel, Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat and Chrysler brands – has finalised a deal to buy ~40% of future nickel-cobalt production from Alliance Nickel’s (ASX:AXN) NiWest nickel cobalt project in WA for an initial five years.

It also snapped up $15m worth of AXN shares at 18c per share, giving it a 11.5% stake in the junior formerly known as GME Resources.

The deal is “transformational” for AXN, boss Paul Kopejtka says.

“It validates our development strategy for the NiWest nickel-cobalt project and opens critical new funding options by securing a premier Tier 1 cornerstone customer and investor,” he said.

“We look forward to a long partnership with Stellantis as we continue to execute our strategy to become the next Australian supplier to the global markets of premium battery-grade nickel and cobalt sulphate.”

And while we’re on the subject of battery metals, Lithium Energy (ASX:LEL) has reported “world class lithium intersections” at the flagship Solaroz brine project in Argentina.

Initial assay from two holes shows lithium brine concentrations of up to 508mg/L across intersections of up to ~400m, with final brine depth yet to be reached in both holes (currently 650m and 545m depth).

Crucially, grades are increasing with depth “with heavier lithium rich brines settling lower into the aquifer”. Drilling at both holes continues.

RareX (ASX:REE) has updated its Cummins Range resource to 519Mt at 0.32% TREO and 4.6% P2O5, for a total of 1.6 million tonnes of contained TREO and 24 million tonnes of contained P2O5.

That’s a whopping 760% increase in contained TREO and 1300% increase in P2O5 compared with the 2021 MRE – making the project the second-largest rare earths deposit, and the largest undeveloped rare earths deposit, in Australia, the company says. 

 

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Lithium Energy and RareX are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.

Read MoreBattery MetalsBiotechLithium

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