Resources Top 5: Former Azure lithium exec joins Lycaon board

Azure’s former MD Tony Rovira joins Lycaon board with $360k investment
Green Critical Minerals starts commissioning of NSW graphite block pilot plant
Gold, uranium and battery recycling see price moves on no news

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in morning trade, Thursday, January 2. Prices accurate at time of writing.

Lycaon Resources (ASX:LYN)

Former Azure Minerals (ASX:AZS) MD Tony Rovira has joined the board of Lycaon, bringing a bunch of experience from the world-class Andover lithium deposit which was ultimately taken over by Hancock Prospecting and Sociedad Química y Minera de Chile S.A. (SQM) in a $1.7 billion all cash deal.

That deal secured Rovira the prestigious ‘Dealer of the Year Award’ at the 2024 Diggers & Dealers Mining Forum, adding to his 2000 ‘Prospector of the Year’ award when he was general manager of Jubilee Mines, during which time he led the team that discovered and developed the world class Cosmos and Cosmos Deeps nickel sulphide deposits in Western Australia.

Rovira also brings a nice $360,000 investment into the company via a placement of 4m shares at 9c per share, to assist LYN as it assesses its existing assets and looks for potential acquisition opportunities.

The company currently holds the West Arunta Stansmore niobium-REE project in WA, where it’s waiting on assay results from maiden drilling in Q1 CY25.

“We are delighted to announce the appointment of Tony to the Lycaon Board. He brings extensive technical and leadership experience in the mining industry that will be invaluable to the company,” LYN chairman Adrian Di Menna said.

Green Critical Minerals (ASX:GCM)

Green Critical Minerals has begun commissioning of a pilot plant in NSW to produce very high density – or VHD – graphite blocks for use as heat sinks in the high-performance computing sector and solar-thermal energy storage systems.

The VHD blocks can be used in materials for the defence and nuclear industries, electrical discharge machining, thermal energy storage, electronics, aerospace, semiconductors and heat sink appliances.

That takes GCM beyond the currently faltering battery metals supply chain, where prices of a host of commodities have come off the boil due to faltering economic growth in China and oversupply.

The promise of the process is that it can produce block graphite in just 24-36 hours at around half the temperature (1500C v 2900C) of the primary synthetic graphite process.

The commissioning was originally slated to begin in Q2 CY25, but GCM says strategic equipment selection and procurement, along with continuous work over the Christmas and New Year period has enabled it to “significantly accelerate construction activities”.

This is mainly due to the design of the pilot plant comprising of two lines, with the smaller product line (Line 1) having allowed accelerated equipment souring and delivery.

Line 1 is capable of producing graphite blocks suitable for customer qualification of heat sink products for the electronics market and product refinement and research and development activities, such as the solar-thermal energy storage blocks for the renewables sector.

All of this adds up to an accelerated schedule, with the company now on track for production of the initial prototype blocks this month, with first qualification blocks due in February 2025, well ahead of the original Q3 FY25 forecast.

Commercialisation and ramp-up is slated for Q1 FY26 – subject to the success of the pilot plant.

Austral Gold (ASX:AGD)

(Up on no news)

The dual-listed ASX-TSXV gold producer started the year struggling with high costs at the Guanaco-Amancaya gold-silver operations in Chile.

Remember back in August 2022 when the mine was targeted by armed bandits, who absconded with ~500oz of gold? Were they ever caught? Was the gold recovered? We don’t know, but probs not. AGD mentioned it once, briefly, in its FY23 annual report, and then never again.

Production is ticking along nicely at Guanaco, and now the company has turned its attention to the Casposo mine – or more specifically its processing plant.

Last week Austral announced its subsidiary, Casposo Argentina Mining (Casposo), had entered into a toll treatment agreement with Challenger Gold (ASX:CEL) where Casposo will process mineralised material from Challenger’s Hualilan project at Casposo’s plant, in San Juan, Argentina.

As part of the deal, Casposo committed to use its best commercial efforts, directly or through third parties, to secure the necessary funding for the refurbishment and commercial startup of the plant by July 31, 2025 – and so have secured a US$7m loan from Banco San Juan S.A.

The company says the transaction will create a new revenue stream to the tune of a US$3m fixed payment (US$2m payable by January 2 2025, US$1m due in two years), a US$110,000 monthly fee, plus an incentive fee linked to recovery margins.

Operations are expected to commence in H2 CY25.

Neometals (ASX:NMT)

(Up on no news)

Battery metals recycler and one-time part owner of the Mt Marion lithium mine, Neometals, is also up on no news.

Back in November chairman Steven Cole addressed the impact of the lithium price drop, and the move to prioritise battery recycling as its closest to cashflow. This included “trimming its cloth” by executing an organisational restructure with a material staff reduction to reset of the company’s cost base.

Notwithstanding these headwinds, Cole said the company’s main lithium-ion battery recycling business in Germany through Primobius, its ELi lithium processing technology and its vanadium recovery project in Finland “have continued to mature towards commercialisation.”

They haven’t ruled out other opportunities with “nearer term value creation and cash generation horizons” including actively considering an exploration program to define gold resources within its Barrambie vanadium-titanium tenement holdings in WA following release of larger than expected historical analysis results.

Haranga Resources (ASX:HAR)

(Up on no news)

The explorer is advancing drilling at its gold and uranium projects, securing $500k in funding last month via a convertible unsecured non-recourse loan facility.

The cash will go towards advancing the Ibel South gold project to ‘drill ready’ status, along with continued auger drilling at the Saraya uranium project – plus a review of new complimentary opportunities in gold and clean energy.

Ibel South is in Senegal West Africa, in an area where more than 40 Moz of gold has been discovered and where a large number of junior and major mining companies actively explore (for) and mine gold.

It’s also around 80 km south-west of the Sabodala-Massawa gold mine, which contains 8.7 Moz of gold.

Notably, the permit area also lies within 65kms of the company’s Saraya project, which means exploration can be serviced directly from Haranga’s 40-man exploration camp near the town of Saraya.

At Saraya the company has already defined a 17.6Mlbs U3O8 indicated and inferred resource at 550 ppm.

At Stockhead we tell it like it is. While Green Critical Minerals is a Stockhead advertiser at the time of writing, it did not sponsor this article.