• Brockman forms JV with +8.5bn iron ore miner Mineral Resources
  • Great Boulder picks up project next to Rumble’s Earaheedy lead-zinc discovery
  • Podium (PGMs), BBX (gold), Greenvale (copper) up on no news

Here are the biggest small cap resources movers in early trade Friday, April 23.

 

BROCKMAN MINING (ASX:BCK)

Is this Australia’s next iron ore miner?

Small cap Brockman and major miner Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) will form a JV to bring a 25 million tonnes a year Pilbara iron ore hub into production.

Upon the formation of the Joint Venture, $8.5bn market cap Mineral Resources will fund ~$105m worth of initial development works at the ‘Marillana’ and ‘Ophthalmia’ project mine sites, as well as on the transport corridor and port area.

“The immediate commencement of these Initial Development Works is intended to speed up the development timeframe of both Marillana Project and Ophthalmia Project, which is currently estimated to be around 42 months from the formation of the Joint Venture,” Brockman says.

 

PODIUM MINERALS (ASX:POD)

(Up on no news)

Platinum group metals (PGMs) have been in the news lately, as the market wakes up to their ongoing value in reducing vehicle emissions.

Podium’s ‘Parks Reef’ PGM project near Cue in WA made headlines of its own recently, with some solid drill hits in the central and eastern sectors.

These included a top intersection of 1m grading 25.74 grams per tonne 3E PGM – platinum, palladium and gold – from 91m within a broader intercept of 7m at 5.75g/t 3E PGM.

Importantly, Podium has rhodium at Parks Reef – a PGE which currently fetches ~US$27,000 per ounce.

 

GREENVALE MINING (ASX:GRV)

(Up on no news)

One of Garimpeiro’s junior explorers to watch if copper pushes Citi’s ‘all-time high within three months’.

Small cap IOCG hunter Greenvale has ground in the Northern Territory’s Barkly region recently described by the NT’s Geological Survey as “one of Australia’s most exciting exploration frontiers”.

The comment followed the discovery of copper in a Federal Government funded drilling program designed to test for rocks capable of hosting large-scale iron oxide copper gold-type (IOCG) deposits like Olympic Dam in South Australia and Ernest Henry in Queensland, Garimpeiro says.

Greenvale is up an eyewatering  1,300% over the past 12 months.

 

GREAT BOULDER RESOURCES (ASX:GBR)

The explorer has picked up a major zinc-lead project right next door to the Rumble Resources (ASX:RTR)Zenith Minerals (ASX:ZNC) Earaheedy discovery in WA.

Rumble’s recent drilling results underpin a shallow, mammoth exploration target of 40 to 100 million tonnes at 3.5% to 4.5% Zn and Pb over 40km of strike.

Great Boulder’s 1,134sqkm ‘Wellington’ project covers ~60km of prospective rocks.

‘Nearology’ for the win.

But while this project is an “exciting addition” to Great Boulder’s exploration portfolio, its focus remains on the Whiteheads and Side Well gold projects.

“This doesn’t impact any of our current exploration priorities in the medium term,” managing director Andrew Paterson says.

“In effect it’s a free option over an emerging, world-class base metals province that has the potential to add serious value to our project portfolio.”

 

BBX MINERALS (ASX:BBX)

(Up on no news)

The Brazil-focused gold play completed a 29-hole drilling program at the ‘Três Estados’ project earlier this month.

Despite ongoing high infection rates from COVID-19 in various parts of Brazil, BBX has been able to continue a test work program designed to fine-tune a preferred extraction technique for the complex mineralisation identified at the Ema and Três Estados projects.

The company has 340.9 sqkm of exploration tenements within the Colider Group, a prospective and underexplored geological environment for gold, PGM and base metal deposits.