Resources Top 5: ASX silver, gold and nickel stocks take off

Crater Gold Mining shares explode 200 per cent before ASX trading halt
Thomson Resources soars on NSW silver projects acquisition
Azure Minerals leaps on new nickel discovery at its WA Andover project

ASX nickel, silver and gold stocks are leading the small cap resources winners in morning trade Thursday, November 12.

Exploration company Crater Gold Mining (ASX:CGN) rocketed 200 per cent Thursday before trading in its shares was halted.

Trading will restart in the company’s shares on the release of some market-moving information to the ASX market.

Earlier this week, Crater Gold Mining announced very high assay results for indium at its Polymetallic project in North Queensland.

The assay results from recent drilling show up to 190 parts per million indium at the project.

Also, “a very high silver value of 2,250 grams per tonne” from one drill hole at the Polymetallic project.

Indium is a rare metal used in semi-conductor applications such as LCDs, solar panels, microchips and photovoltaic cells.

The metal has further applications in transparent conductive coating to glass, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes.

Indium is trading on international markets at $US100-200 per kilogram ($137-$275/kg), but its price is expected to reach $US650/kg by 2031, said the company.

Global reserves of indium are around 50,000 tonnes, and half of this is in China, which produces half of the world’s output.

Crater Gold also has a gold project, Crater Mountain, in Papua New Guinea.

Admiralty Resources (ASX:ADY) was carried aloft in Thursday trading without any substantive new information released to market.

The exploration company has mineral interests in the South American country of Chile and in Australia.

Its projects are in the Harper South, Pampa Toll and El Cojin iron ore districts in Chile.

Production at its Soberana project has been delayed due to COVID-19 restrictions, and financing for its Mariposa project has been stalled for the same reason. Both projects are within the Harper South district in the Atacama desert region.

Pyke Hill is the company’s cobalt-nickel project in WA in which it has a 50 per cent stake.

Shares in Thomson Resources (ASX:TMZ) boomed as it raised $6m of fresh capital and announced it will acquire two NSW silver deposits.

The silver projects are the Webbs and Conrad assets in the New England Fold belt in NSW with historic silver production.

Webbs has some of the highest grades of any undeveloped silver project in Australia, including an eye-watering 1.5m at 345 g/t silver.

“With these acquisitions Thomson has added an additional layer of diversification to its existing high-quality exploration portfolio and with a focussed effort Thomson will be able to quickly move into becoming a silver producer,” executive chairman, David Williams, said.

The Conrad project has considerable potential to expand beyond its currently known mineralised zone, said the company.

Previous exploration drilling included a hit at 2.65m at 206 g/t silver.

Silver Mines (ASX:SVL) is taking a ~19 per cent stake in Thomson Resources, and joining its board is Silver Mines managing director, Anthony McClure.

“The Webbs and Conrad projects represent high-quality assets that have been a lesser focus for Silver Mines given our primary focus has been on developing the Bowdens silver project,” said McClure.

Institutional and sophisticated investors have supported Thomson Resources’ $6m capital raising at 6.2c per share.

Azure Minerals (ASX:AZS) spiked in morning trade on the discovery of a new nickel-copper sulphide zone at its Andover project.

The project 35km southeast of Karratha covers 70sqkm and is similar geologically to the Fraser Range Province, host to Chalice Gold Mines’ (ASX:CHN) Julimar complex for nickel-copper-platinum group elements.

“The key point to take away from our drilling successes to date, is that wherever we have targeted an EM conductor at Andover, we have intersected nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation,” managing director Tony Rovira said.

The company said it had intersected a 38m-wide zone of nickel-copper sulphides, including zones of massive and semi-massive sulphides, from a downhole depth of 336m.

Azure Minerals said a 1 km-long mineralised zone in the Andover project could indicate the presence of a “major new nickel-copper deposit”.

Lithium company Vulcan Energy Resources (ASX:VUL) advanced in Thursday trade as it updated the resource for its Germany-based Taro project.

The resource for the lithium-brine project is now at 16.19 million lithium carbonate equivalent at a grade of 181 mg/l for lithium.

Vulcan said its project in Germany’s Upper Rhine Valley will produce lithium hydroxide for EVs’ lithium-ion batteries.

“The higher confidence resource area is being integrated into our pre-feasibility study, which is on schedule for completion,” managing director, Dr Francis Wedin, said.

“This is in line with our strategy to become a suppler of our unique Zero Carbon Lithium hydroxide to the European battery electric vehicle market,” he added.

The company recently appointed former Tesla director, Jochen Rudat, to its business development team.