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Resources Top 5: Ken Brinsden has a new lithium toy – Patriot – and it just doubled on debut
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- Ken Brinsden-chaired Patriot Battery Metals is an absolute rocket on debut — up nearly 100pc
- Lunnon Metals lifts mineral resource at Baker deposit within 12 months of discovery
- Kingsland Minerals returns up to 2.9% U308 at Cleo Project
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Wednesday December 7.
Patriot Battery Metals (ASX:PMT)
Heads, shoulders, daylight and streets ahead of everyone this morning is freshly dual-listed lithium explorer Patriot Battery Metals.
It raised $4,200,000 at an issue price of $0.60 per CDI. This morning, those shareholders were enjoying near 100pc returns as PMT shot to $1.16 just before the lunch bell.
Patriot owns 214sqkm of prime spod exploration ground including the Corvette discovery, a 50km trend littered with spodumene outcrop it hopes could be the next major North American lithium discovery.
Among the leadership team is a modern lithium legend – Ken Brinsden.
He is famed not only for helping turn Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) from a penny dreadful into a $15 billion lithium giant, but also for driving the development of its Battery Material Exchange auction platform to uncover the true market value of Australian lithium concentrate.
Located just down the road from, among others, Allkem’s (ASX:AKE) James Bay deposit — 37.2Mt at 1.3% Li2O — drilling results have included hits of around 1% Li2O over intercepts greater than 100m. And there’s more to come – soon. PMT notes on listing that it “will be receiving a backlog of assay results, with further announcements expected over the coming weeks”.
LUNNON METALS (ASX:LM8)
Nickel play Lunnon Metals has updated its mineral resource estimate (MRE) for the Baker deposit within the Kambalda Nickel Project, which has become the company’s cornerstone asset within 12 months of announcing the discovery and less than 18 months since listing.
The new Baker MRE now stands at 929,000 tonnes at 3.3% nickel for 30,800 contained nickel tonnes, comprising 638,000 tonnes at 3.8% nickel for 24,000 nickel tonnes in indicated resource and 291,000 tonnes at 2.3% nickel for 6,800 nickel tonnes in inferred resource.
This is more than double the mineral resource that was reported when the company listed on the ASX back in June 2021.
“I couldn’t be happier for everyone at site that has worked so diligently and safely, pushing Baker as quickly as possible to this point,” LM8 managing director Ed Ainscough says.
“To think there was over 30,000t of nickel metal sitting within 300m of the surface at Baker is a little hard to believe looking back to when we listed.
“But it was there, we have found it, it is high-grade and it is so close to the existing infrastructure and local processing capacity – it simply could not have been in a better location.”
KINGSLAND MINERALS (ASX:KNG)
Uranium stock KNG is up 12.5% at the time of writing after receiving all assay results from its maiden drilling program at the Cleo Uranium Project in the Northern Territory.
They are looking pretty speccy too with grades up to 2.9% U308.
A program of 30 holes for 3,228m of reverse circulation (RC) drilling and 450m of diamond core drilling has wrapped up with the rigs demobilised from site and site rehabilitation works well advanced.
Standout results include 16m at 1,435ppm U308 from 116m, including 0.4m at 29,197ppm (2.9%) U308 and 47m at 924ppm U308 from 53m including 14m at 1,772ppm (0.18%) U308.
KNG says planning for future drilling is well underway.
AUROCH MINERALS (ASX:AOU)
(Up on no news)
Earlier this week Auroch completed an oversubscribed placement to accelerate exploration at its two lithium projects – the Nevada Lithium Project in Nevada, USA (within close proximity to the Tesla gigafactory) and the Nepean Lithium Nickel Project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region.
The company raised $2.65m and says it will spend the funds on drilling at the recently discovered Kangaroo Hills lithium prospect – around 8km north of the Nepean Mine – where hits of 6m at 1.38% Li20 have been returned.
BLACK DRAGON GOLD (ASX:BDG)
(Up on no news)
At the end of November BDG identified gold in soil anomalies at the Padbury Gold Project in a program comprising 541 samples.
This work identified several targets over a regional 8km gold trend, coincident with a WNW-ESE striking structural grain identified in previously conducted remote sensing interpretations.
“This first-pass soil sampling at Padbury supports our hypothesis that there is a potential structurally controlled intrusion-related gold target on the project,” geology advisory to the company Dr Darren Holden says.
“The multi-element work with associations of gold with anomalous pathfinders such as silver, copper and other elements provides further evidence suggestive that the project area has seen considerable hydrothermal activity with a large potential footprint.”
GOLDEN DEEPS (ASX:GED)
An “EXCEPTIONAL” 90m intersection of copper-silver mineralisation has been made at GED’s first deeper diamond drillhole at the Khusib Springs deposit in Namibia.
The company believes the intersection demonstrates the potential for major extensions with the exceptionally thick hit including a 28m zone of 101g/t silver and 0.53% copper.
“The intersection of high-grade zinc mineralisation in the footwall of the copper-silver zone adds to the resource potential of this zone,” GED CEO Jonn Dugdale says.
“We look forward to the results of the second deeper hole, KHDD0007, that also intersected a very thick sulphide zone – we’ll then integrate the geophysical program results before planning targeted follow-up drilling.”
