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Resources Top 5: Gold and silver prices are on the rise, and so are these tasty exploration stocks
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- Lode Resources unveils monstrous 1,899g/t silver equivalent hit
- Los Cerros uncovers high grade gold outside 459,000oz Dosquebradas porphyry resource
- Sarytogan pulls up thick, high-grade graphite at namesake project
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Tuesday November 8.
LODE RESOURCES (ASX:LDR)
The silver price is rallying, up 8.25% over the past seven days to its highest point in over a month.
It’s the perfect great time for LDR to unveil a monstrous 1,899g/t silver equivalent hit over 1.5m at the flagship Webb Consol project in NSW.
LDR uses silver equivalent numbers for simplicity, but the actual intercept also contained lead, zinc, copper, and gold.
This hit – part of broader 20.5m intercept @ 375g/t AgEq from 16m — was from the first drill hole into Copy Cat, the sixth sulphide lode discovered to date at the project.
It is also the first drill hole to contain more than 1% copper over the entire 20.5m intercept, LDR says.
However, it is only the fifth best hit so far from the wider project. The top four include:
- 50m @ 314g/t AgEq from 17m
- 5m @ 552g/t AgEq from 104.6m
- 3m @ 412g/t AgEq from 30.1m, and
- 2m @ 450g/t AgEq from 122.9m.
All six mineralised lodes identified so far remain open. Various geophysical programs are now underway to help with future drill hole targeting, the company says.
“Drilling at the Webbs Consol Silver Project continues to yield exciting results,” managing director Ted Leschke says.
“Discovering near-surface high-grade mineralisation in six lodes to date demonstrates both the rich endowment and potential scale of the Webbs Consol mineral system.
“This has heightened our confidence in on-going exploration efforts.”
FOCUS MINERALS (ASX:FML)
(Up on no news)
Like silver, gold is experiencing a small renaissance.
FML shut its Coolgardie, Laverton and The Mount operations in 2013 amid nosediving gold prices and high operating costs.
Now the WA goldie is about to restart mining operations at Coolgardie, where it wants to produce 402,000oz over an initial seven-year life.
The numbers are pretty good. It would cost $51m to build/refurbish, a process which is already underway.
Once in production, it would have an all-in sustaining cost of $1,618/oz – giving FML pre-tax cashflow of $354m and NPV of $242m at a gold price of $2,500/oz.
Commissioning is scheduled for mid 2023.
Meanwhile, toll treating (using third party plants) of low-grade stockpiles has produced 2,200oz to date, and a small 3,400oz mining project at the Big Blow deposit kicked off in October with ore to be milled via a toll treating campaign later in the year.
TREK METALS (ASX:TKM)
(Up on no news)
TKM is up almost 90% since early yesterday, when it announced rock chips grading up to 3% lithium at the Tambourah project in the Pilbara region of WA.
The $40m market cap explorer has now delineated multiple stacked pegmatites outcropping at surface, extending over an area of at least 4km2.
These have never been drill tested, TKM says, “highlighting a significant opportunity to make a greenfields lithium discovery”.
It also completed the acquisition of a tenement from Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) yesterday. This ground is adjacent to TKM’s existing Pincunah project and is “prospective for new gold and base metal discoveries”.
TKM has one of the most experienced lithium boards on the ASX in Neil Biddle, John Young and Tony Leibowitz, who took Pilbara Minerals from sub-$10m shell to +$1bn lithium miner in under five years.
LOS CERROS (ASX:LCL)
LCL has amassed an impressive 2.6Moz resource at its Quinchia project in Colombia but remains convinced that the “causative porphyry” (aka the ‘motherlode’) is yet to be found.
To find it, and just grow resources more generally, LCL launched an extensive +200m soil channel sampling program.
This program has uncovered high grade gold outside the current resource at the 459,000oz Dosquebradas porphyry, one of a cluster of targets within a 3km radius.
Soil sampling from trenches returned high grades like 146.6m @ 1.82g/t Au including 34m @ 4.22g/t Au. Deeper (3+m) auger samples included 9.28g/t Au and 5.68g/t Au.
“We believe an early diorite dyke and associated breccia logged in historic drill core extends to surface in this region and our channel and auger samples have told us we are on the right track,” managing director Jason Stirbinskis says.
“High gold grades at surface such as those we have just encountered could have a positive impact on Dosquebradas economics and its contribution to the Quinchia project.”
READ: The Small Cap +1Moz Gold Club: A Guide, Part 2
SARYTOGAN GRAPHITE (ASX:SGA)
The recently listed explorer is focused on the Sarytogan graphite project in Kazakhstan.
The project contains an Inferred JORC Resource of 209 Mt @28.5% TGC (containing 60Mt of graphite) making it the highest grade and second largest graphite deposit of its ASX peers.
An infill drilling program to update and increase confidence in the resource has pulled up numerous thick, high grades in a sparsely drilled area, including 25.1m @ 34.0% TGC from 17.9m incl. 17.9m @ 37.1%.
The results are typically higher-grade than the resource as hypothesised “by the observation of stronger metamorphism in this area”, SGA says.
“The drilling results from the Sarytogan graphite deposit are continuing to impress and confirm Sarytogan’s status as a giant and exceptionally high-grade deposit,” managing director Sean Gregory says.
“The drilling is nearing completion as planned and we are on track for a Mineral Resource upgrade in Q1 2023.
“This together with the metallurgical test work optimisation underway in Germany and Australia will inform a Scoping Study planned for 2023.”
