It was right in front of our eyes, all along. Pic: Getty Images
Resources Top 5: Let’s dust off the old books and have a look for antimony
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- Octava Minerals the latest explorer to surge after dusting off old antimony numbers
- Stelar Metals spies high grade copper in “Kalahari style” South Australian rock chips
- Mithril among no news gainers
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in morning trade, Tuesday, September 17. Prices accurate at time of writing.
OCTAVA MINERALS (ASX:OCT)
2024’s most successful exploration strategy?
Dust off the old tomes for antimony, periodic table code Sb.
The critical mineral, dominated by Chinese and Russian production and largely processed in the Middle Kingdom, is the metal du jour after China announced export restrictions last month.
That’s seen prices roughly double this year to more than US$24,500/t, with the limited production of the defence and tech metal outside the new Cold Trade War bloc including a US-owned mine in Tajikistan and ageing gold mine in Victoria known as Costerfield.
The need for Sb even prompted the US Government to last week approve the Stibnite mine in Idaho, despite criticism from conservationists over the legacy of previous mining in the region.
$4.5 million micro cap Octava Minerals is sitting on an ~80% gain this morning after, lo and behold, finding some solid antimony grades at its Yallalong project in WA from almost a decade ago.
They included:
- YRC06: 3m at 6.83% Sb from 21m including 1m at 13.6% Sb from 22m
- YRC16: 7m at 3.27% Sb from 12m including 1m at 11.5% from 18m; and
- YRC27: 6m at 1.35% Sb from 13m.
Rock chips included a quartz vein sample of 60.1% antimony, 0.28% lead, 0.14% copper and 31ppb gold, part of a 10km north-south striking ‘antimony corridor’. Another three antimony prospects were identified but never drilled.
Octava MD Bevan Wakelam says the project, 220km from the coastal port of Geraldton in WA’s Mid West, contains some of the highest grade antimony drill hits in Oz.
“Following the completion of a base metal reconnaissance drill program in early 2024, the team has been re-examining project data to determine next steps for Yallalong,” he said.
“It was noted that historic drilling for antimony had been carried out at the project and with ingot prices increasing from ~$8000/tonne to now over US$24,500/tonne , there is definitely unfinished business for antimony at Yallalong.
“The Discovery Target has recorded some of the highest antimony grade drill intercepts in Australia and is open in several directions.
“Prior drilling undertaken was targeting the shallower oxide zone and we are very keen to do some deeper holes to test for possible larger sulphide bodies. There is also a number of undrilled antimony targets, where high-grade surface samples have been recorded.”
Stelar Metals (ASX:SLB)
From antimony re-discoveries to copper rock chips, grade is on the mind of ASX small cap punters today.
Stelar is stepping up, rising over 27% before midday on rock chips at its Lone Pine prospect, near where South Australia’s historic Baratta copper mine churned out ore from 1896 to 1904.
The rock chips come from a 7km corridor of copper mineralisation and geophysical target SLB says was overlooked by other explorers.
While SA copper is now dominated by the iron-oxide copper-gold and uranium occurrences headlined by BHP’s Olympic Dam, Prominent Hill, Oak Dam and Carrapateena, SLB views Baratta’s analogue as the sedimentary-style mineralisation found in the Kalahari copper belt in Central Africa.
Rock chips graded as high as 12.7% copper and 13g/t silver, with 7 of 8 samples collected over a 400m strike assaying at 5% Cu or above.
Curiously, little historic work has been done, with only shallow cuts and scraping from 1950s road machinery in the vicinity.
Kalahari-style mineralisation from the DRC to Zambia is shaping to be the largest source of copper globally after Chile and Peru’s lower grade porphyry deposits, SLB reckons, with only the Adelaide Rift Complex where Baratta is hosted and the Sturt Shelf also in SA appearing to have the style of mineralisation that accounts for 20% of the world’s production.
Stelar says it is undertaking additional surface sampling and mapping at Baratta and will design drill programs based on prioritised targets.
“Stelar is keen to execute an ILUA or NTMA with the Adnyamathanha People who are currently in administration and to seek drilling approvals,” the fine print reads.
NOVA MINERALS (ASX:NVA)
(Up on no news)
The Alaskan explorer is moving on up on nary a whisper, aside from some selling from Bank of New York Mellon yesterday, which revealed a cut in its holding from over 10% to under 9% in a substantial shareholder notice on Monday.
Nova owns the Estelle gold project, a 9.9Moz but low grade discovery in Alaska’s Tintina belt.
It’s looking at two options to progress the project in a pre-feasibility study, either a low capex small-scale start-up through the higher grade RPM deposit funded internally or a larger-scale, higher-capex option leveraging the interest of larger gold miners as strategic partners.
Antimony is also on the mind there, with Nova sending a bulk sample away recently for testing to see if it can set up a standalone antimony operation at its Stibium deposit, leveraging potential grant funding from the US Department of Defense.
Fellow Alaskan gold hunter Felix Gold (ASX:FXG), which is up 133% in the past month, has pursued a similar strategy at its Treasure Creek project as explorers in the region look to be a major new frontier for the defence metal.
$41 million-capped NVA shares were up 13% this morning.
TRUSCOTT MINING (ASX:TRM)
(Up on no news)
TRM has been light on the news front for months.
In fact, if you want to find out what it’s been doing since April 2023 your only source of information is in the NT gold explorer’s quarterly activities and cashflow reports, sans some share trading, cap raising and other administrative details.
Its June quarter report revealed TRM was raising money for drilling, having initiated a one for 18 rights issue to shareholders of the micro cap in response to stronger gold prices.
It’s also been doing some work to understand mineralisation controls around its three tenement holdings in the Tennant Creek gold district.
“Truscott’s R&D work and the associated knowledge base has now reached a stage of maturity where it is of value to all explorers in the region and the company has taken a position of openly sharing of that knowledge,” the explorer said. That’s an unorthodox statement for the dot points of a quarterly.
According to its cashflow numbers TRM spent $167,000 in the year to June 30, $154,000 of that on admin and corporate costs.
Just $60,000 sat in the $13 million company’s vault at June 30. The rights issue was intended to raise $577,890 before costs.
MITHRIL SILVER AND GOLD (ASX:MTH)
(Up on no news)
No news for the Mexican silver hunter, but its investors are still smiling after an update yesterday that the explorer had doubled the number of historic mines workings known to its geos at the Copalquin project.
That came after modern exploration was employed, with Mithril running a LiDAR survey over its 70km2 concession, where MTH has an exclusive option to acquire the ground for US$10m that can be exercised at any time until August 7, 2028.
LiDAR strips away vegeration with hi-res aerial photography and terrain mapping to reveal “amazing geology and structural detail” beneath cover, according to Mithril.
For more on that update, check out yesterday’s RES 5 report.
READ: Resources Top 5: Vanadium hits the headlines as Mithril enjoys Mexican silver fiesta
Silver prices are now sitting at long term highs of ~US$31/oz, tracking gold upwards as investors bay for rate cuts from the US Fed.
MTH boss John Skeet, who led the development of the massive Palmarejo silver mine now owned by Coeur Mining, thinks Copalquin has the potential to be one of many multi-million ounce districts on Mexico’s famous Sierra Madre gold-silver trend.
It has a head start with the El Refugio deposit, which already hosts 529,000oz in gold equivalent resources at an equivalent grade of 6.81g/t Au.
Mithril is up around 62% over the past month.
At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Mithril Silver And Gold was a Stockhead advertiser at the time of writing, it did not sponsor this article.
