Bigger than ever, Resources Rising Stars Gather Round event set for bounce down in Adelaide

Resources Rising Stars, the national events division of investor relations consultancy Read Corporate, is taking its one-day mining conference to Adelaide on 10 April for a weekend of Aussie Rules football, resources investment and fine wine.

This year’s Resources Rising Stars ‘Gather Round’ event at the Adelaide Convention Centre is bigger than ever with 30 junior and mid-tier companies lined up to present insights into their projects and plans.

High-profile speakers including well-known television presenter and financial journalist David Koch, Lion Selection Group’s Hedley Widdup and Bell Direct market analyst Grady Wulff will wrap up the free event with a panel discussion that will provide retail investors with up-to-date information on new growth avenues and hot stock picks.

Coinciding with the AFL’s Gather Round four-day festival of footy, the one-day mining convention is anticipated to draw in large crowds as gold continues its bull run.

Social events organised as part of the event will also offer investors with the opportunity to enjoy drinks (and food) while hobnobbing with company representatives.

First up is Meet the Spartans on April 9 from 3.30pm to 5.30pm.

The free event allows investors to enjoy a drink while meeting with key members of Spartan Resources while checking out the high-grade drill core from the company’s Never Never and Pepper gold discoveries.

It will be followed by welcome drinks that includes a “Front Bar” tribute featuring Koch, Dockers tragic Wulff and AFL legend Ted Richards who will discuss all things financial and footy.

Investors will also have the opportunity to join the exclusive “Winemakers & Minemakers Long Table Lunch” at Seppeltsfield Estate in the Barossa Valley on Friday, April 11 which include an address by Richards, who also happens to be Head of Melbourne at financial services firm Wilsons Advisory.

Who’s on the line-up?

Gold companies feature prominently in the line-up and one of the big draws is market darling Spartan Resources (ASX:SPR), which has quickly grown from its days of scrabbling at a sub 1g/t gold mine in its former guise as Gascoyne Resources to a $2.2bn heavyweight that’s in the process of being acquired by Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS).

This is thanks to the rather fortuitous discovery of first the high-grade Never Never deposit and then equally tasty Pepper deposit.

In late January, Spartan kicked off a major ~85,000m surface and underground to both increase confidence in its existing 2.87Moz resource and to add more ounces.

Executive chairman Simon Lawson who presided over this change will speak at the conference immediately after lunch at 1.15pm.

Arika Resources (ASX:ARI) is exploring in the shadow of world class mines owned by giants like AngloGold Ashanti, Genesis Minerals and Gold Fields at historical production centre of Laverton in WA’s northern Goldfields region.

It recently identified 27 new targets from a review of historical samples at its Yundamindra project, most of which have not been drill-tested before.

The review has also highlighted that the southern half of the project has not been effectively sampled by historical surveys.

Assays from three holes of its maiden RC drill program had returned significant shallow zones of mineralisation and a headline strike of 20m at 1.62 g/t gold from 28m at the Queen of the May prospect.

The company is now planning an ultra-detailed airborne magnetic survey to help focus surface geochemical sampling and drill testing of key structures in the southern area.

Astral Resources (ASX:AAR) is focus on developing its Mandilla project which currently has an open-pittable resource of just under 1.3Moz contained gold.

Metallurgical testing of the key Theia deposit has showed an average gravity recovery of 87.6% and an average 24-hour gold recovery of 98.2%.

Work is also underway on an updated resource and a pre-feasibility study.

This could well include deposits such as Kamperman at the nearby Feysville project where drilling recently returned thick, high-grade gold intersections.

Javelin Minerals (ASX:JAV) is preparing to drill priority targets at its Eureka gold project near Kalgoorlie to test high-priority targets identified during reprocessing of aeromagnetic survey data.

Eureka sits on a mining licence ~50km north of Kalgoorlie within the same greenstone lithological sequence as the world-class >4Moz Paddington gold mine just 20km to the north.

It has previous production of ~32,000oz gold along with an existing resource of 112,000oz of gold, 62,000 of which is in the higher confidence indicated category.

Maiden drilling at its Coogee project have also returned multiple high-grade shoots with grades of up to 65g/t gold and 8.53% copper outside the current resource of 3.65Mt at 1.08g/t gold, or 126,685oz contained gold, and 1.01Mt at 0.41% copper, or 4133t contained copper.

Trek Metals (ASX:TKM) recently identified visible gold in drill chips from drilling at the Christmas Creek project in WA that had delivered standout high-grade results such as 10m at 12.66g/t gold from 59m late last year.

This hit was delivered from the Martin prospect, which is interpreted to be an orogenic gold system, with similar characteristics to the large Tanami deposits over the border in the Northern Territory.

Christmas Creek is seen as having the potential to host large-scale orogenic gold find of considerable scale.

The next round of drilling is expected to start in May.

Copper, critical minerals sharing the limelight

It is not all about gold, though. Companies such as Firetail Resources (ASX:FTL) will also present at the conference.

The company is pushing its Skyline copper project in Canada and Picha copper project in Peru.

Skyline produced 100,000t at between 3-12% copper, 7% zinc and 1-3oz/t silver at the turn of the 20th century, but has seen little exploration since it was held by Noranda in the 1990s.

This is something the company intends to change with plans afoot for drilling of the Governor’s and Veyron targets to determine their potential to host significant copper-zinc-silver VMS mineralisation.

FTL also intends to carry out geophysical and geochemical studies at Picha with plans to use funding from BHP’s 2025 Xplor program for drilling.

Hillgrove Resources (ASX:HGO) stands out as an existing copper producer at its Kanmantoo mine in South Australia, which recently hit a monthly mining record in February of 1105t of copper since it was restarted in 2023.

With mine physicals continuing to improve, Kanmantoo is expected to produce up to 14,000t of copper this calendar year.

This will be boosted by the Nugent deposit, where diamond drilling recently returned assays including 4m at 1.79% copper and 0.65g/t gold from 184.5m.

Nugent is central to the company’s plans to boost the mining and processing rate by 25% from 1.4Mtpa to 1.8Mtpa in H1 2026.

Kingsland Minerals (ASX:KNG) holds one of the largest known graphite resources in Australia with its Leliyn project in the Northern Territory hosting an inferred resource of 194.6Mt at 7.3% total graphitic carbon.

The company intends to upgrade this resource to the higher certainty indicated resource that paves the way for mine planning.

It recently shipped a bulk sample to ProGraphite in Germany for further metallurgical test work, a process that will take around five months.

Results from the resource work and metallurgical testing will underpin a scoping study on production of fine flake graphite concentrate.

Sun Silver (ASX:SS1) is gearing up to launch its 2025 drill program to follow-up on the maiden 2024 drill program at its Maverick Springs project in Nevada.

The company has contracted Alford Drilling to carry out drilling that will infill existing silver-gold mineralisation to increase confidence in the current 423Moz silver equivalent resource.

Drilling is expected to start in April and will also test high-priority step-out targets to the northwest.

It is also relogging and testing historical core and drill chips for antimony after finding the critical mineral in all five of its historical holes.

Event details

The Resources Rising Stars Gather round event will take place in Adelaide on Thursday 10 April from 8.30am to 5.30pm at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

Attendance is free, but registration is essential.

Visit www.resourcesrisingstars.com.au/events to sign up for the event, or find details on how to watch the presentations online.