Aldoro punters are buying up before new samples results come in. Pic: Getty Images
Resources Top 5: Niobium punters send Aldoro 250pc higher in a month
Mining
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- Aldoro pulls up to 250% monthly gain, driven by niobium bets
- New Frontier Minerals, Octava Minerals and KGL Resources up on no news
- Southern Cross Gold hits more gold at Sunday Creek, up to near $700m valuation
Your standout small cap resources stocks on Monday, December 9, 2024.
ALDORO RESOURCES (ASX:ARN)
(Up on no news)
Almost one week on and investors continue to fall over themselves for a slice of Aldoro, latching onto the promise that its surface sampling at the Kameelburg niobium project in Namibia will deliver a major niobium discovery.
The commodity, largely used in high-strength and lightweight steel alloys, is highly concentrated with one mine in Brazil’s Araxa locale owned by CBMM responsible for over 80% of global mined production.
But it’s flown onto the radar of investors with the discovery in our own backyard of WA1 Resources’ (ASX:WA1) Luni niobium deposit. The West Arunta trailblazer has seen its shares ride over 5000% higher since the 2022 discovery, giving a hint of the enthusiasm investors have for the specialty metal.
Fellow ASX explorers Encounter Resources (ASX:ENR), which is looking right next to Luni for its own source of the commodity at the Aileron project, as well as Malawi-focused Globe Metals & Mining (ASX:GBE) have also shone a light on its investment potential.
Kameelburg last week returned a 262m line of samples averaging over 0.5% Nb2O5 including 94m with samples averaging 0.93% Nb2O5.
That has punters anxious for the results of diamond drilling into the Kameelburg carbonatite, with a seven-hole program targeting depths of 200-400m commencing in late November.
ARN is up 24% on Monday, but over 250% over the past month, giving it a market cap of ~$38m.
NEW FRONTIER MINERALS (ASX:NFM)
(Up on no news)
The newly rebadged New Frontier Minerals is back in action having ditched its old Castillo Copper skin, a consequence of the sale of its Cangai copper project in Queensland to Infinity Mining (ASX:IMI).
As it were there’s not a whole lot that’s different, though the Gerrard (Ged) Hall-chaired explorer has shifted focus to its recently acquired Harts Range project around 140km from Alice Springs in the Northern Territory.
Its latest revelation there from a second reconnaissance trip was the delineation of key targets including a 500m-long pegmatite at what it calls the Big Jay prospect.
It follows up an initial trip by the company’s field team, who picked up rock chips grading 29.8% niobium pentoxide, 14.04% uranium oxide, 1.63% dysprosium oxide, 0.22% terbium oxide and 23.02% tantalum pentoxide.
Thirteen samples from the most recent field trip have been sent to a lab for results, with a heliborne radiometric and magnetic survey in January the next exploration milestone.
Big Jay is the latest in a string of prospects outlined by NFM geos, alongside Bobs, Bobs West, Cusp and Dune, with Hall saying on Friday the company was committed to ‘accelerating development efforts and identifying prospective targets’ in the region.
KGL RESOURCES (ASX:KGL)
(Up on no news)
KGL Resources was mum on Monday, but if you want to know why investors have been intrigued by the copper junior look no further than Barry FitzGerald’s incisive summary of the situation on Stockhead on Sunday.
READ: Barry FitzGerald: This potential copper miner can’t fly under the radar forever
Here’s what the doyen of Australian resources writing had to say about KGL in his Garimpeiro column on Sunday.
“It could be that the Jervois project gets overlooked every now and then because it is super remote. Make a 380km road trip heading north on the Stuart Highway out of Alice Springs, turn left on to the Plenty Highway, and you’re at the front gate.
Having said that, Jervois is no mystery to Indonesia’s Salim family, the country’s richest with a net worth put at more than $US10 billion based on Indomie instant noodles and all of the other things found in Indonesian conglomerates like mining, energy, banking, property and so on.
Led by Anthoni Salim, the family holds 35% of KGL and it has supported it in capital raisings over the years.
It has a liking for Aussie mining generally, having acquired the Mt Pleasant coal mine from Rio Tinto for a bargain $224 million in 2016 and the South Australian copper developer Rex Minerals for $393 million earlier this year.
The move on Rex displayed a particular liking for the longer term outlook for copper as its Hillside project came with a development cost bill of $850 million for annual production of 42,000t of copper and 30,000oz of gold.
KGL’s Jervois project is a smaller show. But with earlier work pointing to the potential for annual output of 30,000tpa of copper along with silver and gold credits, it is not far off either.
The resource estimate of 27.45Mt grading 1.87% copper for 513,400t of contained copper is also one of the biggest and highest grade of any of the Australian projects held by ASX juniors and mid-tier companies.”
Down ~30% this year despite growing optimism around ASX copper stocks – though up over 20% on Monday – an updated feasibility study is said to be on its way, with drilling ongoing to enhance the future mine life of the Jervois asset.
SOUTHERN CROSS GOLD (ASX:SXG) and OCTAVA MINERALS (ASX:OCT)
Bundled together due to their shared passion for antimony, only SXG is moving on news today.
The ~$700 million explorer – no resource, yet it may be added – is again rising on gold hits at its Sunday Creek project over in Victoria.
There are high grades in an (uncut) 186m at 8.8g/t gold intersection over eight distinct veins, sure, but the question will be how it holds together as it moves from the exploration stage into something that can be developed.
There were smaller intersections in there including 0.5m at 2541.9g/t over 0.5m and 4880g/t over 0.3m, with more drill results from 14 holes recently completed at the lab for analysis.
Some 60,000m of drilling is planned by Q3 2025. The kicker for SXG is the presence of antimony, much like the Costerfield mine nearby owned by Mandalay Gold. The explorer says the critical metal, valued due to export bans from major producer China which ramped up in significance last week, makes up around 20% of the in-situ value it thinks can be recovered.
Historically Sunday Creek ore was mined by the old timers for antimony and treated both onside and at Costerfield.
Octava meanwhile had no news to report but surged 25% higher to a YTD high of 15c.
OCT kicked off exploration drilling last week at the Yallalong project in WA’s Mid West, where historic drilling at the hopefully named Discovery prospect (maybe it’s a Daft Punk reference) previously struck 7m at 3.27% antimony.
