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Resources Top 5: Punters reward big copper hits, cheap nickel-cobalt explorers
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- Kincora Copper reckons it is getting close to a porphyry motherlode
- Drilling pulls up more thick zones of visual copper-zinc at American West Metals’ advanced Utah project
- Admiralty (iron ore, nickel, cobalt), Corazon (nickel, cobalt), GME (nickel, cobalt, gold) up on no news
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Tuesday March 15.
ADMIRALTY RESOURCES (ASX:ADY)
(Up on no news)
This iron ore-nickel-cobalt explorer/project developer has been largely MIA in 2022.
In February last year, ADY signed a deal to hopefully commercialise its Mariposa iron ore project in Chile.
Under the contract, Chinese company Hainan fully funds mining and construction “with all capital contributions, security, legal costs, risks and potential losses borne by Hainan solely”.
The deal covers the first 2 million tonnes of iron ore. Admiralty will get a ‘laddered’ royalty rate up to 7 per cent per tonne of iron ore produced if the price stays above US$90/t.
In its Dec quarterly the company said it was “now progressing to settling a final Joint Venture Agreement between the Company and Hainan”.
Start of construction was pencilled in for end of May 2022.
“The Company notes that delays in settling the Joint Venture Agreement and enabling commencement of activities at Mariposa were largely due to COVID-19 related travel disruption, particularly given Hainan’s operations team have previously been unable to apply for visas to enter Chile, however this process is now underway,” it says.
GME RESOURCES (ASX:GME)
A soil sampling program has outlined six gold and three nickel anomalies at the ‘Abednego’ project in the eastern goldfields of WA.
Two of those gold anomalies — Manchester and Newcastle – are right on top of a bullseye magnetic anomaly, which sounds promising.
Then there’s the large Breakaway anomaly, which is 1.2km long by 150m wide.
Breakaway, Manchester and Newcastle are also directly along strike from Kin Mining’s (ASX:KIN) recent Mt Flora gold discovery, which is within 1km of GME’s northern tenement boundary.
The three nickel anomalies are located on a 7km trend which has had no previous exploration for nickel, GME says.
Follow-up work will include more soil and rock sampling and geological mapping, to followed up by aircore drilling.
GME’s main asset is its advanced NiWest nickel cobalt project next door to Glencore’s Murrin Murrin Operations.
NiWest, which hosts one of the highest-grade undeveloped nickel laterite resources in Australia, was recently dusted off due to improved battery metals sentiment.
“During the quarter the company witnessed increased interest in the NiWest Nickel Cobalt Project from market participants in the battery metals space,” GME said in late January.
“Given the increased interest in the project, a strong nickel price and evidence of changing investment sentiment, the company will commence a review and an update of the previous work undertaken in the PFS with the view to advancing the project.”
KINCORA COPPER (ASX:KCC)
KCC reckons it is getting close to a porphyry motherlode.
New drilling assays confirm “a new geological discovery” in the southern extension zone at the ‘Trundle Park’ prospect, part of the ‘Trundle’ project in the Lachlan Fold Belt of NSW.
Cumulative gold and copper mineralisation across 196m of gold and copper mineralisation was returned in three skarn zones in hole TRDD029, including:
- Upper Skarn: 36m @ 0.68g/t gold and 0.29% copper
- Middle Skarn: 129m @ 0.17g/t gold and 0.12% copper, including:
- 34m @ 0.38g/t gold and 0.30% copper
Skarn rocks can contain economically valuable sources of metals such as tin, tungsten, manganese, copper, gold, zinc, lead, nickel, molybdenum and iron.
Assay results for hole TRDD030 — which intersected cumulative skarn of ~250m – is expected in three weeks. Most recent hole TRDD031 has intersected cumulative skarn of >100m.
“We have now intersected a tabular, bedded, mineralised skarn system across a strike of over 240m with Upper, Middle and Lower skarns in three holes,” KCC VP of exploration Peter Leaman says.
“Widths, alteration, and visual mineralisation of these skarn zones are providing vectors for follow up drilling.
“These results are very encouraging that we are lateral to and near the margin of the primary target, the ore discovery we are after, which is a higher-grade, large porphyry deposit.”
CORAZON MINING (ASX:CZN)
(Up on no news)
This small cap explorer already has a significant 116,800t nickel, 54,300t copper, and 5,300t cobalt resource at the historic ‘Lynn Lake’ project in Canada.
It will probably get bigger.
A recent $2m placement from advanced nickel explorer and major CZN shareholder Blackstone Minerals (ASX:BSX) will be used to accelerate nickel exploration and development plans.
Drilling is expected to restart this month at Lynn Lake in parallel with ongoing mining and processing studies.
Corazon will also use the cap raise to finalise the acquisition of the ‘Miriam’ project in WA along with initial exploration including geophysical surveys and drilling, and for exploration at its ‘Mt Gilmore’ copper-cobalt-gold project in NSW.
AMERICAN WEST METALS (ASX:AW1)
Drilling has pulled up more thick zones of visual copper-zinc at the ‘West Desert’ project in Utah – ~150km from Rio Tinto’s legendary Bingham Canyon mine — where AW1 is focused on increasing its 59 million tonne copper inventory.
Hole #3 intersected two major mineralised intervals with a total of 102m of copper and zinc mineralisation.
It confirms the continuity near surface of the deeper mineralised zones encountered within holes #1 and #2 “and is supportive of the open pit potential at West Desert”, the company says.
“The visual observations from WD22-02 show more than 102m of zinc and copper mineralisation commencing from 20m downhole,” AW1 managing director Dave O’Neill says.
“The drill hole confirms the upper extensions of very thick mineralisation encountered in the first two drill holes completed by American West.
“This near surface mineralisation is important to our development strategy and the potential for an open pit operation.”
Earlier this month the explorer hit 332m of strong visual copper, zinc, and molybdenum mineralisation in a single hole.
Visual mineralisation stood out in nine separate intervals; significantly, most of them are located outside the known +59Mt resource.
