Resources Top 5: Potential discoveries and a huuuge lithium resource upgrade

Galan Lithium increases resources at Hombre Muerto West 158% to 5.8Mt LCE
Native Minerals intersects massive sulphides during the early stages of drilling at polymetallic Maneater target
Russia-based Tigers Realm Coal will breeze through annual production and sales guidance following a strong Q3

Here are the biggest resources winners in early trade, Monday October 24.

GALAN LITHIUM (ASX:GLN)

Total resources at the flagship Hombre Muerto West (HMW) development in Argentina are up 158% to a massive 5.8Mt lithium carbonate equivalent, paving the way for a potential production increase.

This high grade (866mg/litre lithium) resource also includes a higher confidence 4.4Mt measured component.

The results will be included in a project DFS – the most advanced of all economic studies – which is on track for delivery in Q1 next year.

As part of this study, a potential production increase will be explored.

HMW and the nearby Candelas project previously had combined long term production potential of 34,000tpa LCE.

Even the Galan team is amazed by the scale of this updated resource for Hombre Muerto West, managing director Juan Pablo (JP) Vargas de la Vega says.

“The outcome is game-changing in terms of the step-up in the overall technical and economic potential of this world-class lithium brine asset,” he says.

“This is a function not only of the size of the increase in resource, but also the big step-up in confidence classification that has been achieved.

“This potential is now set to be incorporated into our ongoing Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) work, which is on track for completion during Q1 2023.”

Exploration upside remains for the rest of the HMW concessions not included in the current resource estimate, GLN says.

The $450m market cap stock is down 35% from its peak of $2.33 per share in April this year.

READ: Battle to a Billy: Which ASX lithium stock will be next to hit the $1bn market cap?

TIGERS REALM COAL (ASX:TIG)

The Russia-based coal miner will breeze through annual production and sales guidance following a strong Q3, which has seen the company produce and sell 1.3Mt and 763,000t year to date.

This is against previous guidance of 1Mt-1.2Mt production and 850,000t-1Mt sales, which has now been revised upwards.

Overall, TIG’s numbers are up +57% on the same period in 2021.

With Aussie coal in the nose in the Middle Kingdom – and Russian coal on the nose everywhere else — TIG has focused on the Chinese market “with around 80% of our sales destined for Chinese end users”.

Power coal prices are also unnaturally high against steelmaking coal, says TIG, which also restructured sales contracts with a focus on thermal coal during the period.

“The global steel industry remains under pressure at the moment, due to reduced demand and high energy input costs, which has impacted coking coal, coke and iron ore pricing,” it says.

“The GlobalCOAL Newc index rose from $397/t in June to $434/t by the end of September on the back of strong demand and restricted supply due to weather in New South Wales.

“Overall, TIG has experienced strong pricing relative to historical benchmarks.”

At the end of the quarter, $310m market cap TIG had US$7.7m in the bank in cash with no debt outstanding.

ST GEORGE MINING (ASX:SGQ)

(Up on no news)

It has been a good month for the $40m market cap stock, which is up 75% on some promising early-stage nickel and lithium exploration results.

On October 12 it announced lithium in rock chips up to 2.7% at the flagship Mt Alexander nickel tenements in WA.

On their own rock chips don’t mean much, but these high-grade lithium results occur within several stacked pegmatite dykes up to 1.7km long and 1.4km wide, named the Jailbreak prospect.

Jailbreak is part of a wider 15km north-south LCT corridor within the project area.

Maiden lithium drilling is scheduled to commence in late October/early November, SGQ says.

“The grades and scale we are seeing appears to confirm that we are exploring a highly prospective pegmatite hosted lithium mineral system in its early stage of evaluation,” company exec chair John Prineas says.

“Our lithium bearing pegmatites are located in the same corridor parallel to the Copperfield Granite where Red Dirt Metals (ASX:RDT) has announced significant lithium discoveries and flagged a [12.7Mt] resource.

“Zenith Minerals (ASX:ZNC) has also announced on 11 October 2022 the commencement of drilling of prospective pegmatites at its Mt Ida North Lithium Project, northeast of our lithium-bearing pegmatites.

Further north of Mt Alexander, and also adjacent to the craton scale Mt Ida fault, is Liontown’s (ASX:LTR) large Kathleen Valley lithium deposit which has a mineral resource of 156Mt @ 1.4% Li2O and 130ppm Ta2O5.

“We are in a very good address and look forward to commencing our maiden lithium drill program later this quarter,” Prineas says.

NATIVE MINERAL RESOURCES (ASX:NMR)

NMR intersected ~9m of massive, semi massive and disseminated sulphides from 107m during the early stages of drilling a Maneater target in North QLD.

This hit, during the initial stages of a 700m deep hole, is separate to the main mineralised breccia pipe which is anticipated at 170m depth, the company says.

Current drilling is at 134m down-hole depth at the time of writing.

“NMR is delighted to report that drilling has intersected a previously unrecognised zone of sulfides including massive sulfides at Maneater Hill,” managing director Blake Cannavo says.

“The earlier-than-expected intercept of almost 9m of massive, semi-massive, and disseminated sulfides supports our targeting model that this is a significant, sulfide-rich breccia pipe.

“The drill core looks highly promising, and the company is looking forward to continued drilling toward the main target breccia pipe.

“Initial visual inspection of the core and some preliminary pXRF scans highlight all the expected elements including Zn, Pb, Cu, Ag, and Au.”

SUNSHINE GOLD (ASX:SHN)

(up on no news)

Down the road from NMR is SHN with its Hodgkinson copper-gold project.

The gold, copper and rare earths explorer is currently focused on Ravenswood West further south — next to the QLD’s largest gold mine, 9.8Moz Ravenswood — where a drilling blitz is set to kick off this month (gold, silver) and next (rare earths).

Ravenswood West has 14 major prospects from Titov (Cu-Au-Ag-Mo) in the north to Connolly (Au) in the south.

RC and diamond drilling at Wilbur’s Hill gold-silver target is due to start sometime this month, while RAB drilling of the Elphinstone Creek REE target will start in November.

At Wilbur’s, a geophysical survey completed in September confirmed potential for a large-scale gold system “with geological affinities to the nearby 1.0Moz Mt Wright gold mine and 3.5Moz Mt Leyshon gold mine”, the company said.

SHN MD Damien Keys also says Elphinstone Creek is shaping up as a significant rare earths system.

“It is located within a regionally ‘unique’ alkali intrusion that is importantly high in the permanent magnet metals being neodymium and praseodymium (which constitute an estimated 90% of global rare earth values),” he said mid-year.

The $15m market cap stock is down 40% year-to-date.