Forget water, give us the gold. Pic: Getty Images
Mining
Your standout small cap resources stocks for Thursday, November 28.
Soil samples, artisanal pits, the early work is paying off for Desert Metals at its Adzope gold project in Cote d’Ivoire today, which caught the eye with a 2.4km-long gold anomaly at its King Kong prospect.
That’s priming investors for assay results, due in December this year for eight diamond drill holes for 1676m of core.
The induced polarisation anomaly identified over more than 2.4km is coincident with gold anomalism in the Adzope project’s north-east.
It includes soils samples of 3.55g/t, 1.61g/t and 1.24g/t gold and grab samples in artisanal pits including 8.4g/t, 6.94g/t and 3.06g/t gold.
“Our soil sampling and ground-based geophysics program at King Kong has returned significant gold and coincident geophysical anomalism over +2.4km, thus highlighting the regional northeast-southwest structures that typically host gold mineralisation in this Birimian gold belt,” managing director Stephen Ross said.
“High-grade grab samples up to 8.40g/t gold and 6.94g/t gold from the artisanal pits have shown there is gold in this system. We have completed eight diamond drill holes at the King Kong prospect, with four holes drilled next to artisanal pits and the rest testing individual points of the coincident soil and geophysics anomalies.
“Results are expected during December 2024. The extensive gold anomalies and expansive artisanal workings reported in these surveys support our belief that a large gold system potentially lies in the King Kong area.”
DM1, previously a rare earths explorer in WA, reemerged earlier this year as an African focused gold explorer, with Adzope located in close proximity to the Ivoirian port capital of Abidjan and major deposits like Bonikro and Agbaou.
Its Tengrela South project in located in the north, not far from Sissingue and Tongon and across the border from Resolute Mining’s 11.5Moz Syama in Mali and the 3.2Moz Wahgnion deposit in Burkina Faso.
As Islamic insurgencies and coups have rocked its West African neighbours, Cote d’Ivoire has emerged as the place to be for western explorers seeking exposure to gold in Africa.
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Warriedar has plenty of supporters across the Australian gold investment community, with the $50 million capped junior up around 24% YTD.
It arguably flies under the radar, but the Mark Connelly chaired and Amanda Buckingham-led explorer now boasts over 1.28Moz of gold at its Golden Range project in WA’s Murchison.
That makes it a significant resource holder in one of WA’s most interesting consolidation hotspots, where larger peer Brightstar Resources (ASX:BTR) is piecing together the nearby Sandstone gold district, Spartan Resources (ASX:SPR) has made the Never Never gold discovery, Capricorn Metals (ASX:CMM) is inching to development of the Mt Gibson gold mine and Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS) and Westgold Resources (ASX:WGX) remain the big dogs around the yard.
The latest update to WA8’s bounty was at its prime Ricciardo deposit, putting some extra meat on the bones with a 99% increase in ounces to 16.44Mt at 1.8g/t for 947,500oz.
That includes 467,500oz at 1.6g/t in an open pit shell constrained at $3300/oz. 75% of that is in measured and indicated resources.
Another 480,000oz is rated as an underground resource at 2g/t. That’s pretty low as far as grades you’d typically mine underground go, though it depends on the ore body.
Around 300km east of Geraldton, Ricciardo sits 8km south of the Golden Range mill, with Golden Range producing +300,000oz since the 1990s. It’s been a yo-yo asset since, entering care and maintenance from July 2004-2009 and May 2010-2013, then again in August 2019.
With shades of Robert Palmer, the update of the Ricciardo resource on November 18 drew this commentary from MD Buckingham:
“We are excited by both the outcome itself, and the outlook that it delivers us for the wider corridor of gold deposits. The simple strategy of drilling below shallow open pits to find mineable ounces worked exceptionally well for our producing neighbours.
“The validity of this strategy is now beyond doubt, for us. Not only is the Ricciardo system still wide open down-plunge, but the entire 25km long ‘Golden Corridor’ offers similar potential upside from such a relatively simple drilling focus.
“In the middle of the infrastructure-rich southern Murchison, and located on existing Mining Leases, the opportunity in front of us is utterly irresistible.”
WA8 has been drilling RC holes at the southern end of the 25km-long Golden Corridor at the project, and also owns the million-ounce Big Springs project in Nevada.
Few mining juniors have drawn scrutiny from investors like Hastings in recent weeks.
The owner of the Yangibana rare earths project in WA is down ~54% YTD, but up in recent days after solving a dispute with Andrew Forrest’s Wyloo Metals over the security held in a note issued to Equator Capital Management, a company owned by HAS chair Charles Lew.
Wyloo issued a default notice on its own notes but then withdrew that after the security interest was released by Equator.
The exchangeable notes issued by Wyloo in 2022 to the tune of $150m enabled Hastings to take a 21.5% stake in TSX-listed Neo Performance Materials, a magnet producer targeting US$52-55m in EBITDA for 2024 which has paid $8.9m in dividends to HAS to date.
Those notes mature in October next year. HAS had spent $156 million on Yangibana to September 30, with $318m of capital left to spend, with the construction period coinciding with a big downturn in magnet rare earths prices.
Today’s move comes from a different source, with Hastings announcing a non-binding MoU as one of nine parties selected for the ‘global supply chain resilience initiative with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
It sets out a strategy to develop a fully integrated downstream rare earths processing facility with the support of the petrostate, which has led a charm offensive in the west in recent years to pull in foreign investment in critical minerals.
Hastings, which says Yangibana in WA’s Gascoyne region is 33% complete, says it will assess a range of sites for a hydrometallurgical plant at Onslow in WA, Estonia and in Saudi Arabia.
The MoU with the Saudi Government and its US$9bn ($14bn) GSCRI project will give it the opportunity to assess the latter over the next six months, including a refreshed BFS, identifying strategic JV partners for the Saudi location and potential access to funding including the Saudi Industrial Development Fund, which has the capacity to lend up to 75% of the project cost.
“Hastings is pleased to have signed the MOU with MISA as the Company continues to progress its two-stage development strategy at Yangibana as part of our vision to create an integrated mine-to-magnet supply chain,” HAS exec chair Lew said.
“Hastings looks forward to working with the Saudi Government to assess plans for the construction of a Hydrometallurgical Plant and downstream facilities in the KSA as well as working to secure KSA JV Partners and development financing support.”
HAS says Chinese investor JL Mag, which is taking a 9.8% stake, will remain the designated offtaker for downstream products for a third phase, with JL Mag executive Han Yu to take a position on the HAS board.
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IRIS is bucking the trend for lithium stocks, having managed to raise $8m in a rough market a couple weeks back.
It’s planning to release a maiden mineral resource estimate next year at the Beecher project, having pulled downstream lithium stock Stardust Power (NASDAQ:SDST) as a shareholder by cornerstoning the placement with a $2.5m investment.
It can acquire another $2.5m of stock during a currently running 30 day exclusivity period.
IRIS, which is also planning a resource at its Tin Mountain prospect, has already produced a 6.1% Li2O concentrate from spodumene at Beecher, a pegmatite trend in South Dakota mined from the 1920s to 1950s for lithium, beryllium, tantalum, mica and feldspar.
IR1 is notably backed by Boris Liberman, the patriarch of one of Australia’s richest families.
His shareholding crossed below the 5% disclosure threshold on the ASX after being diluted in the recent placement.
Aldoro lifted 15% on limited volumes with around 140,000 shares changing hands according to Commsec.
Its last update on Tuesday showed preparations for drilling at the Kameelburg rare earths and niobium project in Namibia were progressing, with track and road construction 70% done and two diamond rigs with rods and consumables onsite.
Drill hole locations are being finalised this week as trenching wraps up.
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