• Black Canyon up on high-grade manganese discovery
  • Cobalt Blue makes concentrated effort to turnaround fortunes
  • MinRes a rare large cap mooner as Chinese stimulus reports have resources speculators partying like they’re in the Great Gatsby

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in morning trade, Friday, September 27. Prices accurate at time of writing.

 

Black Canyon (ASX:BCA)

BCA has made a high-grade manganese discovery at its W2 prospect, at the Wandanya project within its Balfour Manganese Field in WA’s Pilbara, where it’s digging into tenure just 80km south of ConsMin’s Woodie Woodie manganese operation.

The junior wants to add Wandanya’s mineralisation to Balfour’s current 314Mt at 10.5% for 33.1Mt Mn resource.

And with drilling wrapped up at the W2 and KR2 prospects and handheld pXRF numbers showing preliminary grades of 15-55% Mn, BCA is confident of expanding the scope of exploration to add additional tonnes to its resource.

How’s manganese demand going you say? Glad you asked.

Shanghai Metals Markets recently reported an uptick in Chinese imports of 14% to 2.61 million Mt for August. Of that 91,300Mt was from Australia, up 8.51% MoM.

Compound that with the suspension of South32 (ASX:S32) 60%-owned Groote Eylandt operation (the rest is Anglo’s) which is pegged to remain shut until March next year, further constraining supplies of high-grade manganese to the market.

Shares in the company are up 20.7% in early trade today to swap for 7c.

 

 

Cobalt Blue (ASX:COB)

(Up on yesterday’s annual report)

After booking a $30m impairment to the value of its assets earlier this year and facing oversupply in the cobalt market, COB had a pretty severe drop in share price of 67% in the last year.

An annual report released yesterday has started to lift spirits – and the stock price again – after stating concentrated commitments to its corporate governance and making significant strides in its operations.

This includes the initiation of the Kwinana Cobalt Refinery Study and the commencement of engineering work by Tetra-Tech, while also partnering with Iwatani Corp for potential collaboration on the refinery and its Broken Hill project.

It also raised $4.8m to further these goals, and shares were up 16.4% today to trade at 8.5c before fading as the morning progressed.

 

 

Loyal Lithium (ASX:LLI)

(Up on no news)

Nothing brewing lately with LLI and the last announcement to the market was about partnering with McGill University to access a C$1m research grant to advance its lithium projects in Canada.

It’s got a field program underway at its flagship Trieste project in Quebec’s prolific James Bay lithium district where 10 geo’s are are conducting field prospecting and are due to wrap up the program today.

They’ve been concentrating on five resistivity trends across an extensive 22km stretch that align with all six known spodumene-bearing pegmatite dyke outcrops within the project area that showed up to 2.2% Li2O near surface.

LLI is is cashed up with $6.3m-worth of funding to advance exploration at the project, which is along trend from a Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) JV with Midland Exploration and Winsome Resources’ (ASX:WR1) Tilly project and nearby 77.9Mt Adina-Jamar Li deposit and proposed Renard 2.2Mtpa processing facility.

The junior was trading 15.4% up today, swapping shares at 15c before coming off to 14c.

 

 

Polymetals Resources (ASX:POL)

(Up on no news)

POL continues to skyrocket after receiving an upgraded ~$30m funding in a loan facility and offtake agreement with long term partner UK-based commodities trader Ocean Partners for its Endeavour base metals mine in mid-September.

The mine developer remains on track to restart Endeavour which comes in with a pre-tax NPV8% of $414m, IRR of a whopping 345% and free cash flow of $609m over the 10-year mine plan with an average annual EBITDA of $89m over the first five years.

“Surface and underground refurbishment work is underway, and we very much look forward to realising on the significant Endeavor asset with its substantive remaining ore reserves and exploration potential,” POL exec director Dave Sproulse says.

“The strategic partnership with Ocean Partners builds upon an existing 20-year relationship between us, with Endeavor being a perfect fit for our respective capability and experience.”

Shares in the junior have risen another 7.7% today, trading at 35c.

 

Mineral Resources (ASX:MIN)

It would be remiss of us not to mention the absolute insanity going on at the top end of the resources market today, which has pushed the ASX 200 into the green despite a collective fart from the other sectors.

MinRes is up almost 10%, normally unheard of for a stock of its heft. After a miserable 2024, it’s now up 33% in a week thanks to China’s stimulus measures, which appeared to accelerate yesterday.

Per ANZ’s research analysts, State-owned news agency Xinhua reported the Politburo had told the real estate market to stop crapping itself (we’re paraphrasing). Market bets on further stimulus after the policy rate cuts announced by the People’s Bank on Monday ramped up.

SGX iron ore, US$89.50/t not too long ago, is now trading at over US$102/t. Copper is +US$10,000/t, gold’s at a record and materials is up 2.85%.

Pour yourselves a cognac and enjoy the TGIF vibes ressie speculators.

 

 

 

 

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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