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Resources Top 5: ‘Most abundant spodumene occurrences I have seen’ — ASX lithium junior preps to drill new Brazil project
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- Solis to buy Jaguar lithium project in Brazil, where surface rock chip sampling has returned grades up to 4.95% Li2O
- Fellow Brazilian lithium play Oceana is drilling 124sqkm Solonópole project
- Pilbara lithium favourite Wildcat marching toward $100m market cap in morning trade
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Wednesday May 31.
SOLIS MINERALS (ASX:SLM)
SLM is buying the Jaguar lithium project in Brazil, where surface rock chip sampling has returned grades up to 4.95% Li2O.
There’s an extensive spodumene-rich pegmatite body mapped over 1km of strike, with widths of +50m, SLM says.
Drilling will kick off in June.
“Brazil is fast becoming a significant player in the hard rock lithium space,” former Delta Lithium (ASX:DLI) boss and current SLM exec director Matt Boyes says.
“Solis’s primary objective is to quickly position itself by acquiring highly prospective underexplored projects in the northeast of Brazil.
“The Jaguar pegmatite hosts confirm LCT-bearing pegmatites with some of the coarsest and most abundant spodumene occurrences I have seen.
“These tenements in what may be a new lithium province are a fantastic addition to our already large tenement position in the northeast of Brazil, and with drilling to commence immediately.”
Big buddy and major shareholder Latin Resources (ASX:LRS) will provide “exploration guidance and country experience”, SLM says.
The LRS spinout dual-listed December 2021 following a $6m IPO, with a focus on three large-scale copper exploration projects in Chile and Peru.
Underwhelming initial exploration results and poor share price performance over the ensuing year culminated in a lithium pivot early 2023.
The CAD$7m stock has rebounded 225% year-to-date. It had ~$1.8m in the bank at the end of March.
OCEANA LITHIUM (ASX:OCN)
(Up on no news)
Fellow Brazilian lithium play OCN has kicked off a 3,000m scout drilling program to test for near-surface lithium at the 124sqkm Solonópole project.
Drilling will start at the Bom Jesus de Baixo pegmatite before moving to other peggie outcrops, the company says.
Drilling will be tightly spaced at 20×20 “designed to assist in determining the actual pegmatite dimensions and dip at each location, as well as its Li grade and mineralogy”.
The $13.5m capped stock is flat year-to-date, and up 150% in its mid-2022 listing price of 20c per share.
GOLDEN STATE MINING (ASX:GSM)
(Up on no news)
The junior WA explorer has rebounded strongly, up 80% in three weeks on larger than normal volumes.
GSM is hunting for tier 1 gold and lithium discoveries across three large scale greenfields projects: Yule, Paynes Find and Southern Cross.
Its main focus right now is Yule, which is 35km from Port Hedland and 13km from De Grey Mining’s (ASX:DEG) world class Hemi gold discovery.
It’s also a proverbial stone’s throw from very popular lithium play Wildcat Resources (ASX:WC8).
Yule is under 15m-20m of cover which has hidden any discoveries from previous explorers.
That project now has +55,000m of systematic, mostly-aircore drilling into it, which has uncovered several gold and lithium targets, the most advanced of which is a 2km long lithium prospect called ‘Nomad’.
A 2000m drilling program at Nomad is pencilled in for July.
Last week GSM picked up more ground adjacent to Nomad, taking its ground position at Yule to ~766sqkm.
READ: Golden State is ticking all the right boxes for anyone looking for a monster scale lithium-gold play
WILDCAT RESOURCES (ASX:WC8)
Speak of the devil.
WC8 is marching toward $100m market cap in morning trade Wednesday after announcing it was ‘boots on the ground’ at the recently acquired Tabba Tabba project.
Maiden lithium drilling is pencilled in for July, it says.
The historical Tabba Tabba tantalum mine and lithium-tantalum project in the Pilbara includes a bunch of mining leases – important if you want to get into production quickly — large areas of outcropping pegmatites, and a high-grade 318,000t at 950ppm Ta2O5 tantalum deposit.
The project, briefly explored and mined by Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) in 2015, was historically a tanty asset so assays for lithium are limited.
However, there are some nice hits like 8m at 1.42% Li2O from 4m for WC8 to follow up.
WC8 says it is still awaiting assays for the most recent drill program at the Mt Adrah gold project.
The junior lithium-gold play has now notched up a 350% over the past month, and 600% year-to-date.
WC8 is prepping a ~$7m cap raise which would give it well more than $10m cash to play with.
ANTILLES GOLD (ASX:AAU)
The Cuba-based gold-copper play is aiming to develop a pipeline of projects through its 49:51 mining joint venture with the Cuban Government’s mining company, GeoMinera SA.
The goal, initially, is to fund a copper porphyry hunt via its part-owned La Demajagua mine.
The La Demajagua open pit would produce 53,146tpa gold and 5905tpa silver and antimony concentrates for nine years, which is expected to be followed by underground operations.
An open pit Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) is nearing completion which should allow construction to kick off Q4 2023.
AAU’s share of construction costs is expected to be ~$20m. Its share of LOM cash surplus will be $265m, it says.
Meanwhile, drilling has kicked off at El Pilar on both the gold-copper oxide zone and the underlying porphyry system.
10,000m of diamond drilling will hit three porphyry intrusives to a vertical depth of 600m.
“[The] potential size of the porphyry cluster could present a significant tier 1 copper gold project if results from the first stage drilling program replicate, or proximate, the single hole drilled by Antilles Gold in 2022 into the outer zone of the El Pilar deposit,” the company says.
That hole pulled up 134m @ 1.23% Cu from 49m, open at depth. Exciting times indeed.
