Resources Top 5: A whole lotta rare earths, manganese, and coal for breakfast

Assays confirm DRE’s Yin rare earth ironstone is a high-grade discovery
South African coal miner and project developer MCM up on no news
EMN releases positive feasibility study base-case results for flagship Chvaletice Manganese Project

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Thursday July 28.

DREADNOUGHT RESOURCES (ASX:DRE)

DRE has three WA projects including the Tarraji-Yampi copper-silver-gold-cobalt project, the Mangaroon nickel-copper-platinum group elements (PGE)-rare earth elements (REE)-gold project and the Central Yilgarn Project.

Shares in the ~$193m market cap company surged some 20% this morning after assays confirmed the Yin rare earth ironstone within the Mangaroon Project in the WA’s Gascoyne region as a high-grade discovery.

Yin, like the Yangibana REE project controlled by the ~$450m Hastings Technology Metals Ltd (ASX.HAS), only 25km away, appears to be a globally unique REE deposit due to the high proportion of neodymium and praseodymium in the total rare earth oxide.

Thick, high-grade rare-earth mineralisation from the first drill line at the Yin rare earth ironstones confirmed by laboratory assays with significant intersections including:

35m at 2.75% TREO from 94m, including 15m at 4.08% TREO from 105m;
34m at 2.59% TREO from surface, including 10m at 6.05% TREO from 11m; and
31m at 1.73% TRE from 24m, including 7m at 3.47% TREO from 29m.

DRE managing director Dean Tuck says drilling at Yin continues to exceed expectations.

“With a second rig mobilising to site this month, we are confident that Yin will produce a substantial initial JORC resource by the end of 2022.

“Once drilling at Yin is complete, the rigs will move to the Y3 ironstone and C1-C5 carbonatites.

“We are seeing genuine scale here with runs already on the board and 66 further anomalies to be assessed by September 2022.”

MC MINING (ASX:MCM)

(Up on no news)

This tiny South African coal miner and project developer recently completed a Bankable Feasibility Study – the most advanced of all project studies – on its 296Mt ‘Makhado’ hard coking coal project in South Africa (68% interest).

The BFS envisages a production of 13.7Mt (coking) and 11.9Mt (thermal) over a 22-year mine life. Post tax IIR and NPV were estimated at 38.2% and $268m, respectively.

The project would use existing infrastructure to minimise upfront costs, which have been estimated at $41m.

EURO MANGANESE (ASX:EMN)

Battery facing explorer EMN has released positive feasibility study base-case results for the flagship Chvaletice Manganese Project in the Czech Republic.

The numbers are looking ok: after-tax NPV of US$1.34bn and pre-tax NPV of US$1.75bn, after-tax IRR of 21.9% with a 4.1-year payback period, and initial capex of US$757.3m.

EMN’s president and CEO Matthew James says several factors uniquely position Euro Manganese to transform into a leading supplier to the European EV market.

“The supply security, traceability, sustainable production, and low impurity, high quality nature of Chvaletice’s battery grade manganese products, make our HPEMM and HPMSM increasingly desirable to customers,” he says.

“We remain focused on progressing our key milestones towards making a final investment decision, including securing our financing package for the project, and have already commenced work alongside our recently appointed project finance adviser, Stifel Nicolaus Europe Limited.”

MT MONGER RESOURCES (ASX:MTM)

This ~$4.3m market cap minnow has hit ‘significant’ gold mineralisation at the Albion Project near Norseman, Western Australia with results up to 7m at 2.96 g/t gold from 36m, 1m at 12.2 g/t gold from 39m, and 1m at 3.03 g/t gold from 42m.

MTM says the gold mineralisation appears to be ‘nuggety’ in its distribution.

Given the potentially nuggety gold distribution, the company intends to assay additional 1m drilling samples and expects more gold results once these assays are completed.

“RC percussion drilling at the Albion Prospect confirms our premise that there are more high-grade gold-bearing structures to be found,” MTM managing director Lachlan Reynolds says.

“The work has successfully identified several areas that will require further follow-up.”

The company is now awaiting the full multi-element assay results from the drilling samples in order to assess what other opportunities, particularly for lithium, may exist in the project area.

THETA GOLD MINES (ASX:TGM)

(Up on no news)

The advanced South African gold explorer recently released DFS results at the Transvaal Gold Mining Estate (TGME) Underground Gold Mine Project.

The project initially includes 4 mines (phase 1) – Beta, Frankfort, Clewer-Dukes Hill-Morgenzon (CDM) and Rietfontein, located near the towns of Pilgrim’s Rest and Sabie in Mpumalanga Province northeast of Johannesburg.

It contains more than 43 historical mines with a longer-term plan to bring these large shallow goldfields back to production with minimum capital expenditure.

Additionally, there is 3.6Moz of Inferred Mineral Resources available for future development which is not included in the Base Case life of mine (LOM) plan.

TGM managing director Bill Guy said the results brings with it the ‘rebirth of one of South Africa’s historical mine projects’.

“Once up to seven mines are brought into production, including Vaalhoek, Desire and Glynn’s Mines, an annual production of 160 koz/pa will make Theta one of South Africa’s most significant, mid-tier listed gold doré producing companies.”