Pic: Maciej Toporowicz, NYC, Moment/ Via Getty Images
Mining
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Monday March 27.
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The Ardea Resources spinout started life as a NSW copper-gold porphyry hunter during the 2019-2020 Lachlan Fold Rush, itself sparked by a couple of potentially major discoveries at Boda and Stavely.
That nearology fervour has since died down (as it does) but GRL continues the hunt for elephants across its extensive 3400sqkm of tenure with rare metal exploration at ‘Narraburra’ currently the focus.
It inked a deal in March last year to earn up to 75% of the advanced project, which contains one of Australia’s largest zirconium, rare earths and rare metal (plus lithium) resources. It is also down the road (proverbially) from Australian Strategic Materials’ (ASX:ASM) advanced Dubbo project.
Narraburra has a previously reported resource of 73.2Mt at 1250g/t zirconium, 327g/t rare earths, 146g/t yttrium, 126g/t niobium, 45g/t hafnium, 54g/t gallium and 118g/t lithium. An updated resource to JORC 2012 standards is due this month, followed by the results of metallurgical testing in the June quarter.
READ: Which ASX rare earths plays are ready to bare their wares in 2023?
Meanwhile, GRL continues the hunt for copper-gold at its other projects – Yeoval, Lewis Ponds, Copper Hill East and Gundagai North and South.
Follow-up drilling is being planned across three porphyry targets at Yeoval, which has an existing 12.8Mt resource at 0.38% copper, 0.14g/t gold, 2.2g/t silver & 120ppm molybdenum.
The $10m capped stock is flat year-to-date. It had $2.4m in the bank at the end of December.
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The standout commodity story over the past few weeks has been gold, and punters are now starting to cast their eye over a bunch of advanced, but potentially undervalued, ASX explorers.
One of these is $20m capped LRL (up ~70% over the past week), which is about to embark on two significant exploration programs.
The company already boasts a 500,000oz at 5g/t resource at its namesake project along the mineral-rich Abitibi greenstone belt in Quebec, Canada.
More drilling to grow this high-grade resource, which was acquired late 2021, is now in the works.
At its historic Comet Vale project in WA, the company is also prepping for a drill program due to start in the next month or so.
It will be the “first genuine surface exploration undertaken at the project for 15 years,” LRL says.
An updated resource estimate for the Sovereign gold trend at Comet Vale is due in the current quarter.
The company had $1.3m in the bank at the end of December.
The Finland-focused nickel sulphide explorer has two main projects, Pulju and Maaninkijoki 3 (MJ3).
At Pulju, NLL has defined an initial 133.6Mt resource for 278,520t nickel and 12,560t cobalt at the Hotinvaara prospect, based on historical near surface drilling only.
Mineralisation here remains open along strike and at depth, with a recent NNL survey picking up some juicy conductors at ~400m, ~800m and ~1500m depth.
The 800m deep conductor is enormous at 1.2km by 1km.
More importantly, NNL says the prospect covers just 2% of the project area.
A drilling program is currently underway, with first assay results expected within the next few weeks. All up, 22,000m of drilling is planned at Hotinvaara over the next ~14 months.
The $20m capped stock is up 65% year-to-date, and 32% on its IPO price of 25c per share. It had $9.75m in the bank at the end of December.
(Up on no news)
BYH is planning to spin out its lithium, rare earths and uranium exploration assets into a new IPO, Mining Green Metals, so it can focus on its copper and manganese projects.
These manganese projects include the Horseshoe South mine — once operated by mining services, iron ore and lithium giant Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN) – and the Brumby Creek and Black Hill prospects.
All three are now part of a JV which $530m capped OM Holdings (ASX:OMH) has farmed into for a 51% stake.
Bryah announced a maiden mineral resource in March last year of 1.84Mt at 21% manganese, including 0.65Mt at 20% Mn on granted mining lease M52/86. The explorer is targeting a resource in the order of 3-5Mt to provide the scale to restart production.
Another gold explorer stirring in early trade.
Drilling is now underway at GSN’s Duketon project, which is along trend from Regis Resources’ (ASX:RRL) Rosemont (~1.06Moz), Baneygo (380,000oz) and Ben Hur (~390,000oz Au) deposits near Laverton, WA.
The focus is the historically mined area of Golden Boulder, where 2022 drilling pulled up thin but high-grade results like 1m at 12.3g/t from less than 50m depth.
This program marks the first of several programs planned on multiple prospects within Duketon, including extension drilling to the advanced Southern Star prospect.
Southern Star is a Ben Hur analogue, GSN says.
The $12m capped stock is down 33% year-to-date. It had $695,000 in the bank at the end of December, which will be supplemented by a $1.75m placement announced early Feb.
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