Resources Top 5: Iron ore stocks are now the greatest thing since sliced bread

Iron ore explorer Mindax flying since being reinstated to ASX last week
Carpentaria now +160% since finalising deal to buy extra 24% share of the Hawsons Iron Project
Freshly listed iron ore explorer Juno bounces back from less-than-stellar ASX debut

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Monday May 17.

MINDAX (ASX:MDX)

(Up on no news)

Former micro-cap struggler Mindax languished for two years in suspension but made up for lost time after getting reinstated to the ASX last week.

Why? The red hot stock has partnered with a Chinese company happy to front capital for a magnetite iron ore project in the Yilgarn province of WA.

Mindax – which hasn’t hit these levels since mid-2013 – now has a market cap of ~$85 million.

CARPENTARIA RESOURCES (ASX:CAP)

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Carpentaria is now up 160% since finalising a deal to buy Pure Metal’s 24% share of the Hawsons Iron Project in NSW for 90 million shares.

The shares will be sold by PM by way of off-market transfers to “two or more non-associated third parties”.

The deal should be finalised on or around May 19.

Carpentaria executive chairman Bryan Granzien says the deal will clear the path of obstacles that have held up Carpentaria’s efforts to realise the full value of the world-class project.

“We now expect to be able to do justice to the Hawsons Project and raise the funds necessary to complete the bankable feasibility study then proceed to development of the project,” he says.

JUNO MINERALS (ASX:JNO)

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Freshly listed iron ore explorer Juno is bouncing back from a less-than-stellar ASX debut last week.

Juno – spun out from Jupiter Mines (ASX:JMS) — owns the Mt Mason hematite project and the Mt Ida magnetite project in WA’s Yilgarn region.

Mt Mason is a near term development opportunity. Mt Ida is a larger, longer-dated proposition, hosting a resource of 1.85 billion tonnes at 29.5% iron on a granted mining lease.

Juno managing director Greg Durack believes it has the potential to be a tier one magnetite mine “and will benefit from learnings drawn from other magnetite ventures currently being pursued in WA”.

ARGENT MINERALS (ASX:ARD)

Argent is a gold/silver explorer (just for a change of pace).

The company is following up impressive 2019 results like 19m at 3.2g/t from ~100m depth with a new drill program at its historic ‘Pine Ridge’ gold mine in NSW.

The 20-hole, 2,400m program will help upgrade the resource to JORC standard – a must have for ASX explorers — and test for extensions to known mineralisation.

Old mine workings in the Pine Ridge area produced grades over 250g/t gold between 1820-1940.

GREENVALE MINING (ASX:GRV)

Greenvale is up an eyewatering 1,350% over the past 12 months.

The small cap IOCG hunter has ground in the Northern Territory’s Barkly region, recently described by the NT’s Geological Survey as “one of Australia’s most exciting exploration frontiers”.

The comment followed the discovery of copper in a Federal Government funded drilling program designed to test for rocks capable of hosting large-scale iron oxide copper gold-type (IOCG) deposits like Olympic Dam in South Australia and Ernest Henry in Queensland.

It also has the advanced Alpha torbanite project in Queensland, where a maiden JORC mineral resource is due out soon.

Torbanite – affectionately known as ‘boghead coal’ — is a rare type of fine-grained black oil shale with at least three high value uses; bitumen, light crude (a precursor to diesel) and activated carbon.