Junior explorers with active drilling campaigns heading into Christmas

Exploration drilling is considered the lifeline for explorers
In spite of market challenges, small cap companies have remained steadfast
Here’s a small list of junior stocks with active drilling plans heading into Christmas

If there’s one saying that captures the spirit of explorers, it’s that they live or die by the drill bit.

While exploration budgets have faced significant headwinds in 2024 due to inflationary pressures, Trump’s US election win, escalating conflict tensions in the Middle East and volatile metal prices, junior companies have held strong.

Despite market conditions, the below ASX small-cap companies have carried on with exploration plans to get boots on the ground and drill rigs spinning as the year comes to a close.

Lady Grey’s opening act

Lanthanein Resources (ASX:LNR) has kicked off drilling across its Lady Grey prospect in WA’s Yilgarn region.

Lady Grey is next door to the historical Bounty gold mine, which produced ~1.3Moz during its heyday at the northern end of the Forrestania greenstone belt.

While the Yilgarn region is a proven producer of more traditional gold ounces, it is also known for its lithium potential with LNR’s Lady Grey prospect sitting adjacent to Covalent Lithium’s Mt Holland mine site.

LNR is currently drilling reverse circulation (RC) pre-collars that will be followed by diamond drilling of the modelled moving loop EM (MLEM) conductor plate under EM line #6.

This conductor plate is aligned with a surface gold geochemical anomaly coincident with a regional structural zone favourable for hosting gold.

Drilling of the three RC pre-collars on the existing historical access road, which links the old Lady Ada mine and the Marvel Loch-Forrestania road, will be carried out to a maximum depth of 150m.

Diamond drilling will follow to a maximum depth of 600m to test the modelled conductor plate that is about 200m below surface and dips to the east.

Bless the rains down in Africa

With the wet season finally over in Africa, Many Peaks Gold’s (ASX:MPK) drilling phase has begun across its gold projects in Côte d’Ivoire.

The company is undertaking a 10,000m drilling campaign at the Ferké and Odienné assets, following up on previous intersections and stand-out hits.

Three aircore rigs have mobilised at Ferké to cover 9km of reconnaissance drilling along the highly prospective structural corridor hosting the Ouarigue South prospect.

This program is designed to delineate extensional targets to open gold mineralisation confirmed in previous drilling that returned 47m at 3.72g/t and 91.1m at 2.02g/t gold from surface, as well as 77.6m at 2.33g/t gold from 45.9m.

Concurrently, field work has commenced at the Odienné project, ahead of a planned 5000m air core campaign that will assess priority targets delineated from the previous quarter’s auger drill results.

Drilling here will focus on target delineation within more than 16km of anomalous gold trends located in the same high-strain corridor that hosts Predictive Discovery’s 5.4Moz gold Bankan deposit, as well as the recent discovery by Awalé Resources/Newmont joint venture, which is located on a contiguous land holding.

Fourth aircore program in the works for KAL

A spin-off of a spin-off company Kalgoorlie Gold (ASX:KAL) listed on November 21 with the gold assets of nickel-cobalt play Ardea Resources (ASX:ARL), itself once part of the now-collapsed Heron Resources.

The $7.14m market cap explorer has its fourth aircore drilling program underway at the Pinjin project, focusing on a broad exploration target at Kirgella East, which comprises several structural and geophysical features centred ~1,200m east-northeast of KAL’s Kirgella Gift and Providence inferred 76,000oz resource.

The Kirgella East area overlies one of the main regional structures within the Laverton Tectonic Zone.

Current KalGold interpretation suggests a number of folds and faults of different geological units, with several areas of demagnetisation that can be an indicator of potential hydrothermal (and possibly gold-bearing) mineralisation processes.

Drilling is set to take around two weeks.

Tapping into unknown and un-drilled areas

The identification of +25 high-priority targets has prompted Arika Resources (ASX:ARI) to press the trigger on extensional drilling next week across the Yundamindra project.

Data-filtering technology was applied to multiple regional and local scale geophysical data sets to identify the new targets, which are consistently associated with many of the region’s most significant multi-million-ounce gold deposits.

Those include Gold Fields’ Wallaby and AngloGold Ashanti’s Sunrise Dam, among the largest and most consistent gold-rich orebodies mined in WA.

But despite the known prospects at Yundamindra appearing to have been extensively drilled, ~90% of all drilling has been limited to near-surface weathered zones and depths of less than 80m with very few holes extending into fresh rock beyond 100m.

Tracing the journey of BHP’s Filo Corp

Belararox (ASX:BRX) has potential to follow in the footsteps of BHP’s 644Mt Filo Del Sol mine with its Toro Malambo-Tambo project to the north boasting similar porphyry characteristics.

The company’s FY25 field program across the 320km2 landholding is underway with maiden drilling about to commence following the reopening of access to the Toro camp.

Drilling will start at Malambo with 3400m of diamond core drilling planned in three drill holes.

These holes will target below outcropping potassic alteration and continue to 1000m to 1200m to test the 3D geochemical anomalies at depth.

The second high-priority drill target to be tested is Tambo South, which has 2600m of diamond drilling planned in two drill holes.

Those are planned to a depth of 1200 to 1400m, targeting below the quartz veins and surface molybdenum anomaly and into the 3D geochemical model.

One to watch in early 2025

Aussie gold explorer Javelin Minerals (ASX:JAV) has expanded its November drilling program at the Coogee gold-copper project by 39% to 3000m.

The first phase of the program will test several strong targets close to the mined Coogee deposit, as well as the surrounding areas to confirm potential extensions and increase the current 3.65Mt resource with initial results expected in December.

In early 2025 the company plans to begin drilling activities at the Eureka gold project in WA’s Eastern Goldfields to follow up on strong structural targets with robust magnetics that haven’t been systematically drill tested.

The Eureka gold deposit was first discovered in the 1890s, with historical underground mining worked until 1940.

Development to test for underground mineralisation potential at Eureka was started in mid-1996 with Tyranna Resources mining 50,600 tonnes of ore grading 3.16 g/t Au producing 5,374oz of gold in 2018.

Well-funded to unlock value

Following the completion of a $3.7m placement and share purchase plan, Redcastle Resources (ASX:RC1) is looking to hit the go button on an 8000m RC drilling project within its Queen Alexandra and Redcastle Reef projects in WA’s Eastern Goldfields.

A drill rig mobilised to site last week to follow up on expanding and identifying new JORC resources, as well as new targets in known zones of gold mineralisation.

The Queen Alexandra component of the program will be supplemented by a deep diamond cored exploration hole following Redcastle securing co-funded support through the Western Australian government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme.

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Lanthanein Resources, Many Peaks Gold, Arika Resources and Belararox are Stockhead clients, they did not sponsor this article.