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Mining
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in morning trade, Monday March 8.
Dart leapt out of the gate after announcing shallow, high grade gold-copper and silver in maiden drilling at the ‘Granite Flats’ prospect in Victoria.
Highlight intercepts included 3m @ 41.1 g/t gold, 1.52 per cent copper and 92.9g/t silver from 28m.
These hits – and a number of long, low grade copper and gold intersections — could represent the edges of a bulk tonnage porphyry discovery, Dart says.
Porphyries are multigenerational monsters responsible for ~60 per cent of the world’s copper, most of its molybdenum, and significant amounts of gold and silver.
Their easy-mining large volumes make up for the low grades, typically between 0.3 per cent to 1 per cent copper equivalent.
“We have enhanced the wider potential of the prospect with numerous long, lower grade, copper and gold intersections over an extensive area that indicate a large, fertile intrusive system that is potentially the source of the widespread mineralised footprint at Granite Flat,” Chirnside says.
Early testing suggests the quality of Anson’s lithium works better than the “commercially available Tier 1 products currently used in the production of high-performance lithium-ion batteries”, the US explorer says.
Due to the success of the initial test work and its findings, Anson is proceeding with a larger bulk sample test work program over the next several months.
The final test report should be provided in Q2 2021, it says.
“This ongoing test work with [battery tester] Novonix (ASX:NVX) is an important step in the commercial development of the Paradox project, and will provide battery makers and potential off-take partners with considerable confidence in our ability to produce a high purity product,” Anson chief exec Bruce Richardson says.
The stock is up 180 per cent so far this year.
(Up on no news)
In February the explorer announced plans to acquire private company ‘Goldfellas’, which owns 20 per cent of the historic high grade Nepean nickel and (maybe) lithium project in WA.
The balance is held by Auroch Resources (ASX:AOU), which is enjoying early drilling success.
Meanwhile, drilling at Lodestar’s free-carried (they don’t pay exploration costs) Ned Creek gold JV with Vango Mining (ASX:VAN) has hit extensions to a previously reported intersection of 4m at 78g/t gold.
The stock is up about 20 per cent so far in 2021.
Near term rare earths producer (and current r/ASX_Bets favourite) Vital has produced a 12kg sample of rare earth carbonate, part of a bulk sampling program at its Nechalacho project in Canada.
“Production of this sample demonstrates we have our processes working correctly and we are preparing to send the sample to [offtake partner] REEtec so it can undergo customer acceptance, as well as producing samples for other potential customers,” Vital Metals Managing Director Geoff Atkins says.
Vital is preparing for rare earth production in Q2 of this year.
“We are preparing for our ore sorter to arrive at Nechalacho while mining is also due to start within the next few weeks, so we are getting ready close to achieving our production goal,” Aktins says.
Vital is up 180 per cent year to date.
Early stage historic exploration defined a 1.7km long “open ended” IP anomaly at Mr Craig copper project in South Australia.
IP surveys, which can detect changes in electric currents caused by different rocks and minerals beneath the surface, are often used by explorers to dial in on drilling targets.
Old drilling in the 1960s hit copper but failed to intersect the core of the anomaly, while recent surface rock chip sampling returned high grade hits like 21.6% Cu and 11.4 g/t silver.
These are all good signs.
“The reprocessing and modelling of the historical IP survey has confirmed a strong association exists between the IP chargeability anomaly, high-grade rock chip samples and significant historical drill intercepts,” chief exec Thomas Line says.
“Taruga will plan a number of angled holes across the IP anomaly which will show the grade potential and true width which is expected to exceed 50m from historical drilling.”
Mining
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