- WA1 soars on $10mn cap raising set to advance niobium-REE discoveries at West Arunta
- Estrella Resources enters into an ore processing and offtake agreement with Murrin Murrin Operations
- Brightstar Resources, Infinity Mining, and Flinders Mines up on no news
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Friday November 18.
WA1 RESOURCES (ASX:WA1)
Shares in WA1 are up 67.80% at the time of writing on news of a $10mn capital raising, fast-tracking the company’s niobium-REE discoveries in the West Arunta.
Undertaken at a price of $2 per new share and a 13% premium to the last traded price of $1.77 on November 11, the placement will result in the issue of 5m shares.
“We sincerely appreciate the support from our new and existing shareholders which is enabling us to continue to execute the exploration we’re so passionate about,” WA1 managing director Paul Savich says.
“Funds raised will primarily be applied to a substantial drilling program at our West Arunta Project which will focus on determining the depth and lateral extent of the carbonatite intrusions intersected at Luni and P2.”
The drilling will take place in 2023.
ESTRELLA RESOURCES (ASX:ESR)
ESR has entered into an ore processing and offtake agreement with Murrin Murrin Operations, a wholly owned subsidiary of Glencore plc for the 5A nickel mine bulk metallurgical sample.
The 5A nickel mine is within the Spargoville Nickel Project, first discovered by Selcast Explortion in the 1960s before the 1A, 5A, and 5D deposits were discovered and developed.
This move positions ESR to move forward with the bulk metallurgical extraction of 2,000 to 4,000t of high grade nickel sulphide ore from the 5A nickel mine, roughly 20km west-south-west of Kambalda, WA.
While the commercial terms for the sale remain confidential, ESR says it expects to see a positive a positive financial return from the extraction of the sample at current high nickel prices.
Field activities are underway with the mobilisation of Estrella staff and contractors to the 5A nickel mine, bulk sample laydown areas have been prepared, pit access and rehabilitation of open pit ramp completed.
The first of the heavy equipment has also arrived on-site to begin the extraction of the sample which is only expected to take a short duration.
From there, ESR says it will be crushed and screened to size at the bulk sample laydown area before being loaded and trucked to Murrin Murrin for processing.
BRIGHTSTAR RESOURCES (ASX:BTR)
(Up on no news)
BTR is about to kick off geotechnical and metallurgical drilling at the flagship 252,100oz Cork Tree Well (CTW) project in WA as part of initial feasibility studies.
There’s plenty of gold left to find though, managing director William Hobba says, both at Cork Tree Well and its wider tenure in the world-class Laverton goldfield.
“The drilling completed this year and in Q4 2021 has continued to show significant exploration upside potential as the drilling has not yet defined the limits of the mineralisation at CTW and Alpha, whilst also defining high-grade lodes that have potential for underground mining and parallel lodes at the main CTW resource,” he says.
BTR owns a mothballed processing plant which could save $$ if it pushes the button on a production decision.
INFINITY MINING (ASX:IMI)
(Up on no news)
An initial 2,500m RC drilling program is underway at Tambourah South, testing lithium bearing pegmatite bodies defined by Infinity during 2022, where surface rock chip samples containing spodumene returned lithium assays up to 2.635 % Li2O.
The program has been designed to target the largest lithium-bearing pegmatite bodies mapped on the tenement and investigate the width and depth extents of the pegmatite bodies, plus the potential for blind repetitions at depth.
Drill hole assays will be released in stages over the coming months, which will help plan Infinity’s 2023 follow-up exploration programs at Tambourah South.
Flinders Mines (ASX:FMS)
(Up on no news)
This ~$82.7m market cap explorer gained 32% back in September on that news that BBIG Group pulled the plug on its farm-in agreement, which Flinders says is an opportunity for it to pursue “a more flexible and staged development of its Pilbara Iron Ore Project (PIOP) as sole owner”.
BBIH (which was the manager of PIOP under the terms of the FIA) agreed to continue to provide management services for the PIOP, for a period of up to three months.
Flinders said at the time it considers a staged development of PIOP to be the optimum strategy to begin operations on site and provide near term cashflow as it continues to engage in preliminary discussions on the staged development of PIOP with third parties.