Pic: Via Getty
Resources Top 5: Investors turn attention to gold, nickel and zinc explorers as outlook brightens
Mining
share
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in morning trade, Thursday December 29.
ALTAMIN (ASX:AZI)
(Up on no news)
Things are looking up for zinc development stocks, like Altamin.
LME zinc stocks currently total 36,525t according to Andy Home of Reuters, which is the lowest this century. Of this, almost 60% is earmarked for physical load-out, leaving just 15,175 tonnes of live tonnage, which represents no more than a few hours worth of global consumption. pic.twitter.com/OhzUGTaDIP
— Gavin Wendt (@MineLifeReport) December 28, 2022
In early December, Altamin completed a joint venture agreement with Appian over the Gorno zinc project, a previously producing high-grade, underground mine located in a historic mining province in Italy.
Appian may invest up to ~A$103 million1 (US$65 million) to earn up to a 67.4% interest in the project, which has sat idle since 1982.
“I am delighted to close this funding with Appian for such an exciting growth and development strategy, with drilling and permitting activities having already started at Gorno,” Altamin MD Geraint Harris said.
Altamin says ~$10.9m in first tranche funding will be used solely to significantly expand the drilling at Gorno through a campaign for 19,000m, complete all permitting, conduct a DFS and build the in-country team in preparation for a final investment decision (FID).
Appian founder and CEO Michael Scherb said the company looks forward to working with the Altamin and Vedra team to progress the development of the asset and bring Gorno into production.
KALGOORLIE GOLD MINING (ASX:KAL)
(Up on no news)
This ~$6.56m explorer – a spinout of battery metals play Ardea Resources (ASX:ARL) — has accumulated over 1,000sqkm around Kalgoorlie, the gold capital of Australia.
The company’s primary focus is the ‘Bulong Taurus’ project, just 35km east of the City of Kalgoorlie Boulder.
Historically, Ardea’s focus at Bulong was the high-grade laterite hosted nickel-cobalt. There has been minimal gold exploration in recent decades.
And yet the full 18km strike length of the ‘Goddard Fault’ within KAL’s tenure has historic gold shafts, current alluvial gold workings and historic non-JORC compliant mineral resource estimates at the ‘Central and ‘Great Ophir’ prospects.
A debut JORC resource at the 700m-long and growing La Mascotte prospect is coming soon, the company says.
GEOPACIFIC RESOURCES (ASX:GPR)
(Up on no news)
GPR’s main focus for 2022 was to better define the 1.5Moz Woodlark Island gold project in PNG following the suspension of project development due to cost blowouts in February.
The company says a key element of this plan has been closed spaced grade control and resource infill drilling in the vicinity of the currently defined open pits.
This has resulted in improved resource confidence and better definition of the high-grade zones within the project as well as a mineral resource estimate for Woodlark with its combined measured indicated resource increasing from 86% to 94% of the total mineral resource estimate, siting at 46.88Mt at 1g/t for 1,541,000oz gold.
ESTRELLA RESOURCES (ASX:ESR)
(Up on no news)
In November, Estrella inked an ore processing and offtake deal with Glencore’s Murrin Murrin Operations for a bulk metallurgical sample from ESR’s 5A nickel mine in WA.
The commercial terms for the sale of the bulk metallurgical sample were confidential, “though the company expects it will see a positive financial return from the extraction of the sample at current high nickel prices”.
Extraction commenced mid December.
“A positive process outcome for the bulk metallurgical sample via the Murrin Murrin HPAL route will provide the Company with a strong basis to fully develop the 5A nickel mine ore resource via simple pit cut back mining methods and further develop remaining nickel resources at Andrews, 5B and 1A nickel deposits,” the company said.
MITRE MINING (ASX:MMC)
(Up on no news)
Mitre Mining joined the ASX boards in September 2021 with a multi-commodity approach to exploration at its Mitre project in NSW’s Lachlan Fold Belt.
In November, the company acquired Bellpark Minerals, owner of the East Pilbara and Mount Alexander lithium projects.
MMC’s East Pilbara Lithium Project has known pegmatite outcropping and high priority untested lithium stream sediment anomaly’s while Mount Alexander is located in the Mt Ida Lithium district close to Red Dirt, Zenith Minerals, St George Mining and has had little historic exploration.
