Resources Top 5: Investors feast on a whole bunch of uranium and REE stocks

A swag of uranium stocks are up as spot price surges
Kingfisher Mining rock chip sampling returns up to 40% rare earths
Desert Metals believes a rare earth system is emerging at Innouendy

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Tuesday August 30.

KINGFISHER MINING (ASX:KFM)

Rare earths explorer KFM has bolted out the gate this morning with rock chip sampling returning up to 40% rare earths and significant levels of valuable magnet rare earths at Mich Well, within the Gascoyne Mineral Field area in Western Australia.

Gascoyne is a proverbial stone’s throw (~100km away) from Hastings Technology Metals’ (ASX:HAS) world-class 27.42Mt at 0.97% TREO ‘Yangibana’ deposit, which has just welcomed Twiggy (Andrew) Forrest’s Wyloo Metals as a strategic investor.

KFM executive director and CEO James Farrell says the company is ‘ecstatic’ with the identification of this new mineralisation.

“The outcropping mineralisation has now been mapped over a strike length of more than 2.2km within our 54km REE target corridor.

“In the lead up to our drilling campaign in Q4 2022, our on-ground exploration will continue to focus on the large pipeline of high-resolution geophysical targets and in particular those within the 10km vicinity immediately west of MW2.”

DESERT METALS (ASX:DM1)

This junior base metals explorer recently added a rare earths string to its bow at the Innouendy project where a 12,745m drilling program using both AC and RC rigs has just wrapped up.

The company believes a rare earth system is emerging with XRF and visual observations demonstrating clays, which host the mineralisation, starting close to surface and intersecting up to 80m thick in parts.

“Step out drilling traverses across 20km of strike length have intersected both thick clays and large volumes of mafic and ultramafic rock. Lab analysis will determine whether these units host significant mineralisation,” DMI adds.

Downhole EM (DHEM) is due to be collected on holes drilled at the Belele and Dingo Pass nickel-copper sulphide projects in the next couple of weeks.

Drilling of off-hole conductors will follow as soon as possible after the DHEM has been completed.

ALLIGATOR ENERGY (ASX:AGE)

(Up on no news)

Uranium stocks across the board are on a tear again this morning – last week, Japan announced the restart of idled nuclear plants while considering building new ones and India revealed it was looking into developing another big nuclear project just weeks after stepping into the sector.

Shares in AGE are up some 20% at the time of writing with the company having kicked off airborne gravity work across the Nabarlek North Project earlier this month in the Alligator Rivers Uranium Province – a highly prospective under-explored region in Australia’s Northern Territory.

NOW READ: Here are five reasons why uranium is about to boom

GTI ENERGY (ASX:GTR)

(Up on no news)

Another uranium play catching some wind today – GTR got its permitting and bonding all in place to begin the first stage of a 100,000ft (30,480m) of drilling at the Great Divide Basin Project in Wyoming.

The company will drill an initial 70 follow-up holes totalling 40,000ft targeting extensions to the mineralised roll front identified by previous drilling at Thor, the most advanced of the GDB project areas, while the remaining 60,000ft of drilling will test the Odin, Teebo, Loki and Wicket project areas.

Thor is located adjacent to Ur-Energy’s 18Mlb Lost Creek deposit and operating ISR uranium plant.

It features identified uranium with economic potential based on widths, grades, and depth of mineralisation along with having characteristics conducive to ISR.

BANNERMAN ENERGY (ASX:BMN)

(Up on no news)

One of Shaw and Partners favourite stocks, the investment and wealth management firm reckons BMN is the most leveraged name in the uranium sector.

The Etango resource in Namibia provides both scale and scalability and BMN is is expected to deliver a DFS in December this year for Etango-8.

“The process is still tracking well and early FEED work is set to begin in parallel,” the company says.

BMN also acquired a 41.8% strategic stake in TSX-V listed critical minerals developer Namibia Critical Metals (NMI) earlier this year, whose core asset is the Lofdal Heavy Rare Earths Project in Namibia.