Ground Breakers: Chalice hits all time high in afterglow of maiden resource announcement

This one has legs.

Boom explorer Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN) is off and running after announcing the largest platinum group elements discovery ever in Australia yesterday.

Its Gonneville deposit also came in as the largest nickel sulphide discovery in 20 years in a maiden resource announcement yesterday.

For those following along at home, its bounty of 330Mt at 0.94g/t platinum, palladium and gold, 0.16% nickel, 0.1% copper and 0.016% cobalt (0.58% nickel equivalent or 1.6g/t palladium equivalent).

It’s a complex mix of metals. Broken down that’s 10Moz of Pd-Pt-Au, 530,000t of nickel, 330,000t of copper and 53,000t of cobalt, the equivalent of 1.9Mt of nickel or 17Moz of palladium.

Woah. Chalice was up 28.5% yesterday to $8.70 but had more fuel left in the tank, opening up 7% at $9.30 this morning.

It briefly charged to all time highs of $9.95 today before reverting back to $9.24, a 6.67% gain, by 12.45 AEDT.

Noted PGE expert Keith Goode told us Gonneville’s the best PGE discovery he’s ever seen.

In nickel terms meanwhile it’s around double the size of Sirius Resources and Mark Creasy’s Nova discovery and in league in tonnage and grade (in nickel equivalent terms) with BHP’s enormous Mt Keith mine, the largest standalone nickel mine in Australia.

Those sorts of comparisons have certainly captured the market.

While the nickel grades may appear low in comparison to a mine like Nova, it’s important to note the role of nickel and copper in PGE dominant projects like Gonneville is that they are essential to recovering the minerals in the processing stage.

In platinum projects in South Africa, nickel and copper values are normally a fraction of the grades seen at Gonneville.

Throw in that Chalice’s Julimar project is just 70km from Perth and has opened a new minerals province along WA’s south west coast, and investors think they’re onto a winner.

Its $3.3 billion market cap is almost unheard of for a junior explorer at the maiden resource stage. Whether that prices Chalice and Julimar out of the grasp of majors who must surely be circling remains to be seen.

Chalice Mining share price today:

Gold Road over and out of Apollo deal

Gold Road Resources (ASX:GOR) has admitted ultimate defeat in the takeover battle for Apollo Consolidated (ASX:AOP) announcing it will sell the 19.9% stake in the junior it recently acquired to Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS).

Ramelius, which has Apollo’s board onside for its 62c a share cash and scrip acquisition, will emerge with a 41% stake in the Lake Rebecca gold project owner.

The news puts Ramelius on a clear path to acquire all of Apollo’s shares in the $181 million takeover bid.

That will hand Ramelius control of the 1.1Moz Lake Rebecca gold project, a low grade bulk tonnage asset it sees as a third hub alongside its Edna May and Mount Magnet operations.

The 280,000ozpa gold miner views Rebecca, 100km east of Kalgoorlie, as a potential 100,000ozpa producer with an initial life of 8-10 years.