Resources Top 5: More lithium winners and a $40m windfall

Hot Chili locks in $40m to acquire the Cortadera copper-gold porphyry discovery in Chile “and deliver rapid resource growth”
Lithium plays continue running hot with today’s standouts Vulcan and Lepidico
Popular nickel stock Desert Metals up on no news

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Friday August 6.

ORMINEX (ASX:ONX)

(Up on no news)

In December, this former struggler sold 50% of its undeveloped 248,000oz ‘Penny’s Find’ gold mine for $1.5m to Horizon Minerals (ASX:HRZ), which shelled out another $1m to fund early development.

Approvals for mine development are in place and a toll milling agreement executed for ore processing in the March quarter 2022.

At the end of July, Orminex was also in discussions “with key stakeholders of a number of strategic gold projects in the proven and prospective Abitibi region, located in the Tier-1 jurisdiction of Quebec, Canada”.

HOT CHILI (ASX:HCH)

This copper project developer has locked in $40m of funding to acquire the Cortadera copper-gold porphyry discovery in Chile “and deliver rapid resource growth”.

This includes a $35m private placement cornerstoned by mining major Glencore, which will emerge as HCH’s biggest shareholder (9.99%).

Hot Chili’s Managing Director Christian Easterday says Glencore’s investment and involvement “is a strong endorsement of our future”.

HCH is now funded to deliver a major resource upgrade and pre-feasibility study for the wider ‘Costa Fuego’ project, which has a current resource of 2.9Mt copper, 2.7Moz gold and 9.9Moz silver and 64,000t molybdenum.

DESERT METALS (ASX:DM1)

(Up on no news)

The WA nickel explorer has fallen back from recent highs but remains +105% on its December IPO price of 20c per share.

Diamond drilling began in Q3 at the ‘Irrida Hill’ target, where massive (high grade) sulphide has been confirmed as the cause of the underlying conductors.

Electromagnetic conductors are used by explorers as a ‘signpost’ to find nickel-copper sulphides via drilling.

LEPIDICO (ASX:LPD)

(Up on no news)

~$85m market cap Lepidico is up ~44% over the past 5 days — on no news – to pare back some of those early 2021 losses.

The stock wants to build a lithium mine and concentrator in Namibia, and a chemical conversion plant in Abu Dhabi.

Lepidico’s chemical plant would have a low carbon footprint once developed, new studies show, which is increasingly important to investors.

The company’s scope 1 and 2 emissions intensity associated with its Abu Dhabi Phase 1 chemical plant is just 7.46t CO2-e2/t lithium hydroxide – which independent consultant GHD advised as being, “low compared with other emission intensities reported or derived from lithium hydroxide production facilities.”

VULCAN ENERGY (ASX:VUL)

(Up on no news)

The supreme champion of recent ASX lithium stock winners.

$1.5 billion market cap Vulcan is now up 68% over the past month and an eyewatering 2,310% in the past year.

Its shares skyrocketed this week on the release of a report that showed its Upper Rhine Valley lithium project would have a net outcome of taking 2.9Mt of CO2 out of the atmosphere over its lifetime.

According to Vulcan, the project will extract lithium from deep geothermal brines which will also generate electricity.

This non-emitting geothermal energy would power its own processes and be sold into the grid to displace coal from the German electricity network.