Lithium and borate explorer Balkan Mining and Minerals rockets on ASX debut

Balkan Mining and Minerals has exploded on debut, rocketing 80% to 36c on its first day as an ASX-listed company.

Balkan Mining and Minerals (ASX: BMM), which was spun out of Jadar Resources (ASX:JDR, a 22% holder) and backed to the tune of a $2m cornerstone investment from Sandfire Resources (ASX:SFR), raised $6.5m at 20c in its IPO. Other noteworthy inclusions to the register include John Langley Hancock, the son of billionaire Gina Rinehart and grandson of the mining magnate Lang Hancock.

It is now trading way above that, giving the lithium and borate explorer the ideal start to exploration activities on its Rekovac lithium and borate project in the Tier 1 Vardar Zone of Serbia.

Around 2.6 million shares in the hot stock changed hands on its first day of trade, or around $884,000 worth.

Rekovac project ready to be explored

Rekovac has similar geological settings to Rio Tinto’s world-class Jadar discovery, which contains a mammoth ore reserve of 16.6Mt at 1.81% lithium oxide and 13.4% boron trioxide.

Rekovac contains three contiguous exploration licences in the Pomoravlje district of Sumadija and Western Serbia over 273km2 around 20km from Jagodina, the region’s administrative centre.

Balkan Mining already has a leg up from Jadar’s recent work on the project.

Drilling by Jadar identified a number of broad zones of borate-bearing sediments and an upper zone characterised by irregular crystalline aggregates, patches and veinlets of searlesite and a lower zone by disseminated searlesite grains.

Jadar completed two deep drill holes of around 600m in depth, with one striking a pair of intervals including 0.6m at 16,454ppm B2O3 and 474ppm Li2O from 515.9m and 1.9m at 12,349ppm B2O3 and 484ppm L2O from 578.5m.

These confirmed the potential for the site to host a significant mineralised system.

Exploration by Balkan over the next two years will include planning, acquiring and interpretating new gravity and magnetic data; detailed geological mapping and relogging of drill core; and drilling to test targets developed by the previous work.

Dobrinja and Pranjani

Balkan also holds the Dobrinja and Pranjani licences around 90km southwest of Belgrade, the Serbian capital.

Earlier studies carried out by the Yugoslavian Geological Survey identified favourable lacustrine strata for hosting lithium and boron within the licenced areas, which was followed up by Jadar´s desktop studies that identified the basin’s potential.

No exploration has been undertaken yet on either Dobrinja or Pranjani, with Balkan planning to focus on target generation using regional geophysics, geological mapping and surface sampling followed by drill testing of the targets if early findings warrant it.

This article was developed in collaboration with Balkan Mining and Minerals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.