Quarterly Wrap: West Wits receives US$26m for Qala Shallows and Nordic drills at Pulju

It’s a wrap for Q4 2023 and here are some of the latest highlights from a few ASX juniors on their activities for the three months to the end of December.

West Wits Mining (ASX:WWI)

It was a big quarter for WWI, especially for the company’s Witwatersrand gold project in South Africa, where it received formal acceptance from the government for prospecting rights south of its 924,000oz Qala Shallows deposit and has another prospecting right application being processed for additional tenure in the region.

Not only that, it received firm commitments from South Africa’s mining investment arm the Industrial Development Corporation for US$26m of debt funding to develop the Qala Shallows, accounting to 50% of projected capital costs.

In November, WWI successfully raised $1.2m through a 1.1c share placement for working capital and mining activities at Qala Shallows.

The developer has a $29m market cap and its share price sits at 1.2c.

Dynamic Metals (ASX:DYM)

DYM was laser focused on early exploration works at its Widgiemooltha lithium and pathfinder elements project during the December quarter.

The explorer ran into grades of up to 182ppm Li, 28ppm Rb, and 70ppm Cs after following up a 2.8km-long lithium trend at the project’s Pioneer Dome West prospect.

At Spargos East, maiden soil assays returned up to 409ppm Li2O at the Spargos East prospect, supported by significant pathfinder elements and additional lithium trends were identified at the Franks Far Southeast prospect.

At the Lake Percy project, over 900m of RC drilling was completed as part of a phase two exploration program targeting nickel and PGEs aking the prolific Lake Johnston greenstone belt, with assays due this month.

DYM shares are trading at 13.5c with a market cap of $4.6m and a cash balance of $3.1m.

NickelX (ASX:NKL)

Focused on its Dalwallinu nickel-copper-PGE project, in the Western Yilgarn, WA, NKL completed a ~1,700m RC drilling program where priority targets represent some of the highest West Yilgarn PGE assays and significant and coincident anomalous values for nickel and copper (up to 466ppm Ni and 843ppm Cu).

Dalwallinu covers 86km2 of the entire Barra Barra Greenstone Belt, where geochemical targets complement the modelled bedrock conductors at DEM1 and DEM2 prospects, which are prospective for massive sulphides.

The DEM2 high-priority geophysical target represents some of the strongest FLEM responses in the West Yilgarn over 65 x 65m with high conductance (16,850 S) sub-vertical plate at a very shallow depth of ~30m from surface.

NKL has a cash position of $1.9m to support ongoing drilling at Dalwallinu and has a market cap of $3.5m and shares are trading at 4c.

Nordic Nickel (ASX:NNL)

The last batch of assay results from NNL’s 2023 maiden drilling campaign at its Pulju nickel project in Finland have returned additional extensive zones of disseminated nickel sulphides containing numerous higher-grade zones.

During the quarter assays returned the strongest nickel mineralisation reported to date at the Hotinvaara deposit at hole HOT016, with 91.7m @ 0.22% nickel from 1.6m, 164.15m @ 0.20% nickel from 216m and 26.4m @ 0.59% Ni from 412.6m.

The explorer also raised $2.05m to advance ongoing exploration and project development at the 133.6Mt @ 0.21% nickel Hotinvaara deposit.

“We are currently finalising the updated resource estimate which is expected to be announced later this quarter,” NNL MD Todd Ross says.

NNL had a cash balance of $2.9m by the end of 2023 and has a market cap of $9.3m and shares were trading at 13c per share.

Iltani Resources (ASX:ILT)

Stage 1 RC drilling program across 14 holes for 2,028m was completed at the Orient project during the December quarter where assays have confirming the presence of an extensive silver-lead-zinc-indium vein system.

ILT says Stage 1 was successful in demonstrating the potential of the Orient system to host one of Australia’s largest silver deposits, combined with material exposure to critical raw materials (indium and antimony).

Stage 2 then commenced with eight drill holes completed for 1,276m before the drill rig was temporarily demobilised in readiness for Cyclone Jasper. Samples have been submitted with assay results pending.

ILT has a cash balance of and $6m market cap with shares last trading at 17.5c.

West Wits Mining, Dynamic Metals, Nickel X, Nordic Nickel and Iltani Resources are Stockhead advertisers.