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Mining
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Tuesday January 2.
MTM flew out of the gate with volume on no official news, before entering a trading halt “pending an announcement regarding assay results from previous drilling at its Pomme rare earths project in Quebec”.
The explorer formerly known as Mt Monger acquired the Pomme rare earths-niobium exploration project in February last year for $1m in cash and shares.
The company says Pomme has similar geology to Geomega’s advanced 266Mt Montviel carbonatite REE-Nb deposit, just 7km away.
Just two holes were punched into Pomme back in 2012, but they both returned thick mineralised intersections interspersed with high grade chunks, including a highlight 508.3m @ 0.43% TREO, 413ppm Nb2O5 and 1.48% P2O5, from 73.7m depth.
MTM’s most recent 13-hole drill program has already returned thick, promising hits, like 398m @ 0.54% TREO (5,400ppm) and 0.05% Nb2O5 from 16m.
The $10m capped stock raised $1m via convertible notes to institutional investors in November.
LLI has stumbled across a 2.8m long spodumene ‘Mega Crystal’ while channel sampling at its Trieste project in James Bay, Quebec.
The mega crystal, which usually grade 5-7% lithium, is the length of 1.5 LLI geologists. Here’s another one, 0.8 geologists long:
The objective of channel sampling — collected along surface trenches, or floors and walls of underground workings — is to cut a linear channel across the vein or orebody for the most representative samples possible.
Best results from the trenching program included 11.5m at 1.72% and 21m at 1.01% Li2O. Bodes well for the upcoming drilling program at Trieste, which is a stone’s throw from $200m capped Winsome Resources’ (ASX:WR1) Adina-Jamar project.
“The Trieste greenstone is rapidly evolving, with five distinct spodumene discoveries now documented, including Winsome Resources’ recently announced maiden Mineral Resource Estimate of 59 Mt at 1.12% Li2O at the Adina-Jamar Project, located just 10km west of Loyal Lithium’s Trieste Lithium Project,” LLI boss Adam Ritchie says.
“We firmly believe that understanding and maximizing the advantages of the metasediment host zone will distinguish the Trieste lithium project above other James Bay lithium projects.
“The potential mining and processing advantages could position Trieste as a low-cost producer, and we are eager to involve our loyal investors in this educational journey.”
LLI has $9.6m in the bank to fund its upcoming drill program, set to kick off in the Canadian winter.
The lithium minnow has inked binding agreements to buy one of the largest lithium brine projects in South America.
The 1200sqkm Tama Atacama project in Chile comes with “extensive” lithium surface anomalies with elevated lithium results up to 2,200ppm lithium and averaging 700ppm Li extending over 160km north to south. That’s high grade.
PAM calls it a “tier 1 asset in a tier 1 jurisdiction”, but the company won’t know that for sure until geophysics and drilling kick off in early 2024.
Chile alarmed investors in 2023 when it moved to take greater control over its lithium sector, the second biggest globally.
However, PAM boss and major shareholder (~26%) Paul Lock maintains its not as bad as it looks for overseas explorers.
“The recent MOU between SQM and Codelco quells speculation around nationalisation, which follows several strategic moves in Chilean lithium by multinational mining and chemical companies, including French based Eramet SA’s recent purchase of early stage Li brine assets for ~A$150m, Codelco’s acquisition of Lithium Power and its Maricunga Li brine assets for A$385m, and recent indications from BASF, BYD and Tsingshan that they plan to build lithium conversion plants in Chile,” he says.
PAM says preliminary discussions with potential strategic partners are underway and PAM expects to have initial discussions with key Chilean government organisations in early 2024.
The $25m capped stock has ~$2.8m in the bank.
(Up on no news)
The tiny Chilean copper explorer mostly had a year to forget in 2023 as its share price plunged 72%.
CPO’s main game is the Fortuna project, where in December it reported “significant widths of visible copper mineralisation” in drilling at the El Quillay North prospect.
The company reckons this could be the edges of an Iron Oxide Copper-Gold (IOCG) hydrothermal system.
The two holes pulled up 40m and 23m wide copper-rich hits, which remain open in all directions. Assays are due this month, the company said.
“It is a fantastic result to immediately intersect visible copper so near to surface with our first two diamond holes at El Quillay North,” CPO managing director Macx Tuesley says.
“This validates our initial work and confirms the prospectivity of this very exciting target.
“It also highlights the vast potential of the extensive El Quillay mineralised corridor, dominated by a wide, approximately 3km long zone, of outcropping copper mineralisation, the majority of which remains undrilled.”
(Up on no news)
Last year PEC put its silica sand project on ice to focus on lithium exploration in Brazil’s ‘lithium valley’, next door to big boys Sigma Lithium, Lithium Ionic Corp and ASX-listed Latin Resources (ASX: LRS).
PEC is still at the rock and soil sampling stage but early results are promising, it said mid-December.
“Our exploration team has promptly initiated follow-up fieldwork, underway currently, and looks forward to reporting follow up sampling results in the first quarter of 2024,” PEC exploration maestro Allan Stephens said at the time.
The $10m capped stock had ~$2m in the bank at the end of September.
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