Resources Top 4: A rare earths 'gamechanger', parabolic copper juniors, and the most dangerous gold target you've ever seen

Mako Gold maps targets for drill testing at ~870,000oz Napié flagship in Côte d’Ivoire
Cobre dials in on giants along Kalahari Copper Belt
Kairos says it has a gamechanger on its hands at Black Cat, a clay hosted rare earths discovery 110km from Lynas (ASX:LYC)

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Monday January 29.

MAKO GOLD (ASX:MKG)

Veteran small cap watcher Barry Fitzgerald recently wrote about this small African goldie which has a 868,000oz resource “and a couple of other steak knives in the draw”.

Mako’s focus is on Napié in Côte d’Ivoire, one of the less challenging countries in West Africa.

It is currently doing a bunch of low-cost mapping exercises across the project area to generate new targets for drill testing; targets which include a “bespoke” 40m deep artisanal mining site:

“It is assumed that artisanal miners would not be chasing quartz veins to those depths if they were not high-grade,” the company says.

Too right.

Due diligence on acquiring neighbour Goldridge Resources — a privately owned company associated with the founders of Tietto (ASX:TIE) — is also progressing, the company says.

MKG is in the process of raising $500,00 @ 1c/sh via share purchase plan, which follows a recent $2m placement.

An early stage survey undertaken by elephant hunter CBE and mid-tier miner Sandfire (ASX:SFR) along the Kalahari Copper Belt (KCB) has dialled in on “priority settings” for potential large scale copper-silver deposits.

“The AGG [airborne gravity gradient survey] results are proving enormously useful as a targeting tool and we expect the data to form an integral part of our next phase of exploration,” CBE CEO Adam Woolbridge says.

“We’re particularly encouraged by the potential of the method for highlighting preserved fold hinge trap-sites which we believe to hold the key for Tier 1 deposits in the KCB.”

It has been a nice little period for the $25m capped African gold hunter, which is now up ~120% in the last five trading days on volume.

Last week it received US$500,000 from global major BHP’s 2024 Xplor program.

CBE was one of two ASX stocks – and six all up – to be selected from a pool of more than 500 applicants.

It had a $3.5m cash cushion at the end of September, which gives it enough funding for Q1 at current burn rates.

KAIROS MINERALS (ASX:KAI)

The former gold explorer reckons it has a gamechanger on its hands at Black Cat, a clay hosted rare earths discovery 110km from Lynas’ (ASX:LYC) new Kalgoorlie processing plant in WA.

While clay deposits projects have advantages over their hard rock counterparts – a higher proportion of magnet REEs, lower exploration, mining and processing costs – they are usually far lower grade.

Not in this case.

KAI says this thing has genuine scale with hits like 28m @ 3854ppm TREO from 32m, which includes 4m @ 23,000pmm (2.3%) TREO.

More than 90% of holes testing for rare earths have hit significant mineralisation, it says.

All-important metallurgical test work is underway.

“These will tell us, among other factors, whether the material could be upgraded through a simple beneficiation [removing waste to upgrade ore] process for sale to a rare earths processor,” KAI managing director Pete Turner says.

The best clay deposits also have a decent ionic component, which means REEs can be easily, quickly, and cheaply ‘leached’ in a salt solution.

Meanwhile, the company is looking to sell its 1.6Moz Mt York gold project in the Pilbara, with discussions underway with third parties “about potential corporate transactions”.

KAI was cashed up with $6.4m in the bank at the end of December.

PANTERA MINERALS (ASX:PFE)

PFE listed as iron ore explorer in 2021, pivoted briefly to silver/lead and manganese, before picking up a stake in a lithium brines company in the Smackover region of the US.

PFE’s soon-to-be 100% owned company Daytona Lithium is surrounded by majors like Exxon and Albemarle, who are also eyeing a lithium bounty in this established oil and gas province.

PFE today released a fairly loose exploration target (educated guess, pre resource drilling) for its Superbird project of 364Mt-1,238Mt of brine with a grade between 225-450mg/L lithium.

That’s between ~430,000t and 4Mt lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) over Superbored’s “abstract” 50,000-acre area; abstract because the project only covers 12,500 acres of leases right now.

This abstract area is a basket of acreage the company is systematically leasing through an exclusive agreement. Daytona currently has another 9,000 acres under negotiation.

The company had $1.8m in the bank at the end of December.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Mako and Pantera are Stockhead advertiser, they did not sponsor this article.