• Manhattan hits 8m at 40.5g/t gold, including 3m at 105.34g/t
  • Chalice completes first stage of Venture Minerals nickel-copper-PGE project earn in deal
  • Coda Minerals’ ‘Emmie Bluff Deeps’ IOCG discovery keeps getting bigger

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Monday December 6.

 

MANHATTAN CORP (ASX:MHC)

The stock excited punters late last year when a maiden drilling program discovered a new shallow and high-grade gold lode ’ at the ‘Tibooburra’ project in NSW, 240m west of the historic ‘Main Zone’ at the project’s New Bendigo prospect.

The company failed to maintain this momentum into 2021.

Now the excitement could be back, with MHC pulling up nice hits like 8m at 40.5 g/t gold from about 70m, including 3m at 105.34 g/t at Main Zone.

This wasn’t the only big hit from the completed 20 hole, ~2,100m program either, which is also a good sign.

It also only covered a small, 650m chunk of a much larger 5km long gold-in-soil anomaly.

Future drilling will focus on testing the size of Main Zone which has the potential to be a significant shallow, high-grade gold resource, MHC says.

A planned 5,000m drilling program will now be significantly increased and extended to include diamond drilling at depth (>100m). Drilling is scheduled to kick off after the Christmas Break.

“These are the best gold drill intersections reported from the Koonenberry Region to date,” exec director Kell Nielsen says.

“We are extremely pleased with their significance and feel that they prove the potential of the Tibooburra Project to host multi-million-ounce gold discoveries.”

“The next steps and drill planning will be important in understanding the potential of the mineralised system at New Bendigo where numerous individual lenses (or shoots) may exist.”

“From the recently completed RC drilling, MHC is better placed to target future drilling, specifically the high-grade lenses that traditionally can be up to 15-20m thick and 50-150m wide and plunge or extend over several hundred metres in length.”

The $20m market cap stock is up 30% over the past month, and down 57% year-to-date. It had $3.8m in the bank at the end of September.

 

VENTURE MINERALS (ASX:VMS)

Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN) reckons Venture Minerals has some of the best-looking ground in the Julimar region (besides their own, of course), which is why they inked a earn in JV agreement over VMS’ ‘South West’ nickel-copper-PGE project.

$3.2bn market cap CHN has now completed the first stage of the deal by spending at least $300,000 on exploration by November 30.

The focus right now is Thor’, a 20km long Julimar lookalike magnetic anomaly.

Results of an early-stage electromagnetic program will be announced “once Chalice’s exploration team have received the final data and completed their interpretation of any resultant bedrock conductors”, VMS says.

This is expected in early 2022.

Chalice will follow-up any conductors from the EM program with soil sampling to define potential drill targets. Should Chalice elect to drill the targets it will need to spend a cumulative $1.2 million by 29th July 2022 to earn 51%, and then a further $2.5 million to earn 70%.

“With Venture’s JV partner Chalice Mining completing the first stage of the JV earn-in through the completion of a detailed EM survey, the company now eagerly awaits the survey results,” VMS managing director Andrew Radonjic says.

“The knowledge gained from Chalice’s Julimar discoveries will be a huge advantage in determining which conductors should be drilled first and this no doubt increases the probability of bringing a discovery forward.”

$68m market cap VMS – which also has advanced iron ore and tin-tungsten projects in the portfolio — is up 20% over the past month and down 4% year-to-date. It had about $9m in the bank at the end of September.

 

CODA MINERALS (ASX:COD)

On 9 June Coda announced that its first diamond drillhole at ‘Emmie Bluff Deeps’ IOCG target in South Australia had intersected 200m of “intense IOCG alteration”, including~ 50m of copper sulphides.

The market loved it. IOCG (iron oxide copper gold) discoveries — while often super deep — are big, lucrative, and rare as hens’ teeth.

Subsequent assay results confirmed the potentially company making find which, since then, has only gotten bigger.

The mineralised envelope at Emmie Bluff Deeps has now been “materially extended by drilling to the north, east and south”. It remains open in all directions, COD says.

Critically, hole ‘EBD3W3B’ encountered additional zones dominated by bornite — a high-grade copper sulphide — extending the core of the mineralised zone a further 70m to the south where it remains open.

Assay results from five drill holes, for which visual observations of mineralisation have been released to ASX, remain outstanding due to delays at assay labs, COD says.

The company expects to receive and release most of these results prior to Christmas. A maiden resource for the shallow Emmie Bluff Zambian-style copper cobalt deposit is also on track for release before the end of the year.

“We have now had an outstanding run of nine holes from this and the previous drilling program,” Coda CEO Chris Stevens says.

“All have returned materially important intersections and we are beginning to demonstrate a clear trend of increasing thickness and tenor of mineralisation as we systematically follow the bornite-dominant zone to the south-east.”

“In particular, the results from EBD3W3B are exceptional. Once confirmed by assays, this hole will not only materially extend the known bornite-dominated zone but should also give us one of our thickest sulphide intersections to date.”

“It also appears to have identified at least one major mineralising structure, providing a significantly improved structural understanding of the deposit – and possible vectors towards a basement-tapping source or ‘pipe’ structure.”

COD has now approved an “ambitious” ongoing exploration program which is underpinned by a strong cash balance of $17.8m at the end of the September quarter.

The $90m market cap stock is up 11% over the past month, and 211% year to date.

 

PRAIRIE MINING (ASX:PDZ)

(Up on no news)

Former coal minnow PDZ has done a full 180-degree swivel, dumping its fossil fuel focus in favour sexier, ‘new age’ metals like copper, nickel and PGMs. It is also changing its name to GreenX Metals.

The main game is some newly acquired ground in Greenland called ‘Arctic Rift’, where historical exploration results are indicative of an extensive mineral system “with potential to host world-class copper deposits”.

Greenland is increasingly recognised as one exploration’s final frontiers, as melting ice caps reveal more ground. All the big boys want a slice, PDZ says.

” A boat’s a boat, but the mystery box could be anything!” — Peter Griffin.

“Greenland is increasingly recognised as one of the last great mineral resource frontiers having recently attracted interest from Rio Tinto, Anglo American, DeBeers, Glencore, Trafigura, and IGO, as well as KoBold Metals who have joint ventured with Bluejay Mining to explore in Greenland for critical materials used in EVs,” it said October 6.

“KoBold is backed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Bloomberg founder Michael Bloomberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Bridgewater Associates.”

The $61m market cap stock is up 4% over the past month, and 41% year-to-date. The company is looking to raise $4.6m to fund the Greenland acquisition and exploration into the new year.

 

BLACK ROCK MINING (ASX:BKT)

POSCO-backed BKT wants to bring its advanced ‘Mahenge’ graphite project in Tanzania into production.

Mahenge’s 212 million tonne graphite resource makes it the fourth largest in the world. BKT says it has lowest peak capital expenditure per annual tonne of production of any development stage global graphite project and would enjoy a high AISC margin of 63.1% once in production.

The company has just completed a massive 500t pilot plant run – the largest ever, it says — to send to off for qualification (testing) to POSCO and potential customers in North America, Asia and Europe. This will ultimately support project financing, BKT says.

“Black Rock has delivered the largest customer qualification program in the graphite sector globally, that continues to demonstrate to the market that we have a high-quality commercial grade product,” BKT managing director John de Vries says.

“The positive outcomes from this large-scale qualification plant campaign effectively provide a robust platform for our strong customer base to now base their decisions to confidently partner with Black Rock for the long-term.”

“This in turn provides confidence to financiers that the robust economics of the Project are supported through a clear path to market.”

BKT now needs to finalise off-take terms with POSCO and secure finance to underpin $US116m Phase 1 development capex.

The $170m market cap stock is down 17% over the past month, and up 100% year-to-date. It had $9.3m in the bank at the end of September.