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Resources Top 5: Lithium acquisitions, discoveries still moving the dial for ASX small caps
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- Discovery Alaska confirms lithium mineralisation at Coal Creek prospect
- Ragusa Minerals snaps up 570sqkm of lithium ground in the NT
- Besra (gold), BBX (gold) and Peak (nickel) up on no news
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Monday May 23.
DISCOVERY ALASKA (ASX:DAF)
This gold minnow has enjoyed a solid rerate since converting to the Church of Lithium last week.
DAF is busy proving up the lithium potential of its ‘Coal Creek’ prospect – part of the Chulitna Project in Alaska – after finding widespread lithium mineralisation in old drill core.
Today, it announced that handheld analyser readings confirm the presence of lithium in 12 historical Coal Creek drill holes, selected as initial priority.
The company believes lithium was never assayed at Coal Creek prospect, where multiple drill programs have been conducted over the past 40 years.
Most of the drill core from these campaigns – possibly over 5000m worth — is stored at the Alaska Geologic Materials Center warehouse, and available for the company to utilise. Bonus.
A maiden resource is now in the works.
“The company is excited to progress lithium exploration at our Coal Creek prospect with positive scanning results indicating broad zones of lithium in all drill holes tested thus far,” say DAF director Jerko Zuvela, who is also MD at advanced lithium play Argosy Minerals (ASX:AGY).
READ: Argosy Minerals’ Jerko Zuvela on why its near-production lithium project is built… different
“Next stage works include laboratory analysis testing of the prospective core identified from the scanned priority drill holes,” he says.
“We look forward to realising the lithium potential at our Coal Creek prospect and advancing works toward delineating a maiden JORC resource.”
$20m market cap DAF is up ~220% year-to-date. It had $1.7m in the bank at the end of March.
RAGUSA MINERALS (ASX:RAS)
The former gold explorer is now all in on lithium, snapping up an additional 570sqkm on the ‘Litchfield’ pegmatite belt in the NT.
It complements a previous acquisition announced mid-March.
Ragusa intends to start exploration works to target outcropping pegmatite rocks identified from prior exploration, to develop a more comprehensive lithium exploration program.
“The company has secured extremely strategic and highly sought-after lithium prospective tenements in the centre of a well-renowned lithium district,” Ragusa chair Jerko Zuvela says.
Oh, hey Jerko. Fancy seeing you here.
“This is a significant opportunity to combine Ragusa’s existing NT lithium projects to create a combined ‘supergroup’ project area comparable to neighbours Core Lithium (ASX:CXO) and Lithium Plus (ASX:LPM), and utilise our exploration and development experience to rapidly progress our NT Lithium Project in a Tier 1 jurisdiction close to major infrastructure,” he says.
“With four currently granted tenements and considerable historic works to reference, Ragusa is in a strong position to rapidly accelerate the development of our project at a time of record lithium prices and within a proven high quality lithium district.”
The $12m market cap stock is up 23% year-to-date. It had $3.2m in the bank at the end of March.
BBX MINERALS (ASX:BBX)
(Up on no news)
The Brazil-focused gold play is blaming COVID for its lack of activity in 2022.
Its projects are also very weird, and require ongoing test work program designed to fine-tune a preferred extraction technique for the complex mineralisation.
The adopted method consists of smelting samples with a nickel ‘collector’.
This is followed by initial digestion of the resulting nickel button to remove nickel, and then a subsequent digestion of the residue containing the precious metals that remained after filtration.
The final solution is then assayed by a conventional fire assay/AA finish.
During the quarter, the BBX assayed two drill holes from its 2017 RC drilling programme at ‘Três Estados’, but continued to experience “minor inconsistencies” with the performance of the QA/QC control samples.
The $50m market cap stock is down 31% year-to-date. It had $1.1m in the bank at the end of March, plus a financing facility worth $9.95m.
BESRA GOLD (ASX:BEZ)
Gold explorer BEZ mooned last week on no news, before being placed in a trading halt by the ASX police.
In response to a Price and Volume Query, BEZ maintains that the results on ongoing drilling have not been leaked.
“All computers at the Bau office are password locked to prevent unauthorised access,” it says as part of a very detailed response.
“Only the QA/QC geologist and geologists working on the specific cores have access to the computer system, and all staff and consultants are subject to confidentiality agreements.”
BEZ’s substantial 3.3Moz ‘Bau’ gold project in Malaysia also includes an additional 4.9Moz – 9.3Moz exploration target.
Eight holes have now been successfully completed at the ‘Jugan’ prospect with assays for seven holes reported to date and a further 11 holes pending release.
These were anticipated to be received progressively from the end of last week, BEZ says, but are now overdue because of lab backlogs.
Drilling has now moved to the 644,000oz ‘Bekajang’ prospect to grow that resource.
The ~$23m market cap stock is flat year-to-date. It had $2.8m in the bank at the end of March.
PEAK MINERALS (ASX:PUA)
(Up on no news)
Exploration at the ‘Meekatharra’ nickel JV in WA with Taruga Minerals (ASX:TAR) will be fast-tracked after a shallow aircore drilling program hit “broad zones of highly encouraging nickel intercepts”.
18 holes were drilled at ‘Tal Val’, ‘Target B’ and ‘Target C’ to test interpreted mafic-ultramafic intrusions. Nickel hits were subsequently confirmed at all three.
‘Target B’ is a priority geophysical target within the Meekatharra JV between Peak and Taruga; the rest belong to PUA.
A Moving Loop Electromagnetic Survey (MLEM) will be completed over Target B in May, with RC/diamond drilling planned in June/July.
“We received assays back within six weeks of drilling which confirmed ultramafic intrusives and nickel anomalism above a very large, strong EM conductor,” PUA CEO Jennifer Neild says.
“The isolated conductor and presence of sulphides is enough for us to go right to MLEM and book the drill rig in.
“It’s not often you get to move so quickly on a target, but this goes to show that we have a better understanding of the Lady Alma system.”
The $20m market cap stock is up 50% year-to-date. It had $3.1m in the bank at the end of March.
