Copper explorers are among those making a play at the ASX boards. Pic: Getty Images
IPO Watch: Copper opportunities emerge on the ASX as red metal holds lustre for investors
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- Raptor Resources is aiming to raise up to $10 million for its high grade Canadian copper exploits
- Ilala Metals rattles the tin for $5-8 million to explore uranium and copper in Botswana
- CleanTech Lithium seeks $20 million to dual list Chilean brine project on the ASX
Fresh off all time highs earlier this year and in response to a dearth of pure-play copper options on the ASX, new IPOs looking to bring international copper resources to Australian investors are starting to roll off the conveyor belt.
While demand for public listings has been muted since a bumper year in 2021, a handful of small caps are tapping the market for funding, lining up in one of the rare bright spots for resources in 2024.
Currently in the throes of an IPO raising chasing up to $10 million, one of two new offerings in the copper-starved ASX investment space is Raptor Resources (future code RAP).
It’s focused on reviving the Bathurst region of New Brunswick, located in Newfoundland in Canada, one of the hottest emerging copper provinces tapped by ASX explorers following the emergence of $360 million capped FireFly Metals (ASX:FFM) and $15 million capped minnow Firetail Resources (ASX:FTL).
Led by former Placer Dome geo and Winchester Resources MD Brett Wallace, Raptor is looking to reignite the flame in a forgotten high-grade VMS copper district.
The Canadian locale has placed host to as many as 45 VMS copper, lead and zinc mines, many mined out at depths of over 900m.
At the newly acquired Chester project, RAP boasts 6.6Mt at 1.1% copper in a shallow resource Wallace told Stockhead has room to be extended both at depth and near surface.
“The copper market is quite a strong market with a great price, and there’s a great need for copper demand going forward,” Wallace said.
“I think we’ve got a point of difference over other IPOs is we actually have an advanced project. We’ve got a resource that we can expand.
“And the other main point of difference with this resource is it’s from surface. It’s not like we’re 600-700m down. We’re drilling from surface, and we’ve got a mineralised system from surface, with a JORC resource that is from surface down to its current shell, which is only about 150m deep.
“So we’ve got a great opportunity just to continue drilling through a known stringer system, where we’ve got a known strike length of 1.5km kilometers, but it could go significantly deeper than that.
“All the mines in the area have gone down to 800-900m in depth.”
Now watch: Long Shortz with Raptor Resources: The RAP pack soaring to the ASX
New Brunswick
Raptor, which is also acquiring the Emu Lake nickel project in WA from Metal Hawk (ASX:MHK), is aiming to turn the drill bit onto a patch of ground where copper was first discovered upwards of 60 years ago.
In that time, majors like Newmont and Teck have been among the parties that have held onto the turf, though market volatility and global shifts in copper supply have kept further development from occurring.
That means the opportunity for small-scale miners to leverage higher prices amid supply-demand deficits could get more pronounced in the years ahead.
RAP is picking up Chester as well as the nearby Turgeon project, also a volcanogenic massive sulphide deposit but inside a mafic host rock, from Canadian Copper Inc. and TSX.V-listed Puma Exploration.
“There has been an ebb and flow in the base metal market, particularly through the ’80s and ’90s. It fell through a different set of hand and then just recently, for whatever reason, Canadian stock exchange listed companies just cannot get funding internally,” Wallace said.
“Both the vendors that we’ve acquired these off, they have a flagship project themselves and so these became kind of non core to them, so we’ve been the beneficiary of picking up some really good projects that just need a bit of love to do some significant work on and expand.”
A lot of that work will involve re-entering previously cased diamond drill holes to extend the mineralisation at Chester at depth, with an interpreted massive sulphide zone to the east also presenting an opportunity to add tonnes close to surface.
Wallace is confident the company can add to its copper inventory with infill and extensional drilling, with the largest mines in the Bathurst centre known to have produced upwards of 100Mt of ore.
The deepest holes in the main resource extend to ~300m, with the deepest ending in high-grade mineralisation.
“Over the course of 12 to 15 months, we’ll continue drilling down dip and deeper than the mineralised strike zone to basically increase the resource as we go,” Wallace said.
At Turgeon an N43-101 (non-JORC compliant) resource has previously been declared of 3.3Mt at 1.5% Cu, which now makes up an exploration target for Raptor pending future drilling.
The Euroz Hartleys led IPO is currently slated to close on August 21, with a planned listing date of mid-September.
More copper
Also on the trail to IPO is Ilala Metals, which was rattling the tin for $5m this week after opening its offering on Monday.
The junior could accept up to $8m in subscriptions chasing uranium and copper in the Kalahari belt of Botswana.
Less advanced than Raptor, Ilala has started drilling adjacent to Lotus Resources’ (ASX:LOT) development-focused Lethlakane yellowcake deposit at its Serule uranium project.
It has also been undertaking survey work to proapre for drill testing at the Central copper project, which sits under 10km from the massive Khoemacau discovery recently sold for US$1.9bn to China’s MMG.
“With uranium prices on the rise and growing global demand for copper this juncture offers a compelling opportunity to invest in a dual focussed exploration and development company as we are building at Ilala Metals,” Ilala chair Eric Lilford, who counts former Extract Resources executive Richard Henning as his MD, said.
The IPO is being led by BW Equities and is expected to close later this month.
South American lithium
You may remember our chat with Steve Kesler in this very column around two months ago.
The copper vet, who played a role in the establishment of two of the world’s largest copper mines in Escondida and Collahuasi, was in Australia sounding out investors for a planned tilt on the ASX boards.
The dual-listing prospectus for his firm CleanTech Lithium, already listed on London’s AIM exchange, has now dropped.
The Chilean brine play, which is aiming to pioneer direct lithium extraction techniques in the lithium rich South American country, is chasing up to $20 million and counts Sydney insto Regal Funds Management at its largest shareholder with 15% of the register.
CleanTech is chasing admission by September 24, with Fox Davis Capital and CLSA Australia on the ticket for the raising.
“We are looking forward to introducing CTL to the Australian market, providing Australian investors the opportunity to invest in an emerging producer of battery grade lithium from a country with an established lithium industry, an FTA with the USA and a preferential trade agreement with the EU,” exec chair and interim CEO Kesler said in a statement this week.
“Our two core projects host, in aggregate, total resources of more than 2.7 million tonnes of LCE and we are advancing the use of DLE technology, which features much higher recovery rates and less environmental impact compared to conventional forms of lithium extraction.
“We are also aiming to be powered by renewable energy once in production, utilising Chile’s excellent renewable energy resources including in the region of our projects.
“Harnessing DLE and renewable energy positions CTL to be a leader in a more efficient method of producing lithium in Chile, and we believe this will give us an advantage in supplying a premium lithium product to the market.”
A pre-feasibility study at CTL’s flagship Laguna Verde project is due by the end of 2024.
Also with IPOs recently opened are Vietnamese ferrotungsten producer Tungsten Metals Group and African gold hopeful Siguiri Gold.
READ: IPO Watch: The exploration IPO market begins to tick. Ever. So. Slightly.
At Stockhead, we tell is like it is. While Raptor Resources was a Stockhead advertiser at the time of writing, it did not sponsor this article.
