Pic: Chris Clor/ Tetra images, Via Getty Images.
Mining
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Monday May 30.
The explorer soared +100% after hitting a “spectacular” 119m at 3.9g/t gold equivalent from 106m depth at the ‘Sunday Creek’ project in Victoria.
True thickness – the width of the vein/orebody/shoot at its narrowest point – is estimated at an impressive 71m – 83m.
This hit in hole SDDSC033 included a bunch of higher-grade zones like:
Antimony is alloyed with lead and tin for use in products like bullets, batteries, and semiconductors.
This latest result — drilled to test a 120m gap between three mineralised shoots — is “unprecedented”, managing director Michael Hudson says. This sort of width of high-grade mineralisation is rarely, if ever, seen in the Victorian goldfields.
“A result of 119.2m @ 3.9g/t AuEq places the Sunday Creek project into a new realm and builds on what was already a remarkably successful drill program,” he says.
“Continuity, with great width and grades, is now evident down to 335m vertical depth in the Apollo Shoot that remains open to depth, while multiple adjacent shoots remain to be drilled out.
“With the freehold land secured, industry-leading drill results, strong local relationships, a team of ore discoverers in place and the drill rig continuing to target extensions to mineralisation found in SDDSC033, we highly anticipate further results.”
Priority drilling is now underway to target wide and high-grade extensions to mineralisation found in SDDSC033.
Beyond that, there is a 10km mineralised trend at Sunday Creek that has yet to receive any exploration drilling and offers potential future upside, SXG says.
It’s the perfect start to listed life for this spinout of TSX-listed Mawson Gold, which hit the bourse May 16 after raising $10m at 20c per share in an IPO.
The explorer returned high-grade lithium up to 1.96% and very high-grade rubidium of up to 1.42% from a surface rock chip sampling program at the ‘Mt Deans’ project in WA.
Fun fact: this project is just 1.44sqkm in size. A proverbial postage stamp.
The upside is that rubidium – used in solar panels, fibre optic cables, GPS systems, night vision equipment, and sodium-ion batteries — currently sells for +$1,000/kg.
These new sampling results indicate a strong positive relationship with recent drilling at Mt Deans, which has an interpreted pegmatite (lithium-hosting rock) +1,500m long open at both ends.
Plans are now underway plans to complete the remaining 1,800m across 12 holes in the maiden drilling program at Mt Deans “as a priority”.
“The first phase of drilling delivered highly encouraging lithium and rubidium grades in numerous intersections, some with significant widths,” managing director Peter Schwann says.
“The follow-up rock chip sampling program has returned excellent results and will help refine our drill targeting for the remaining holes to be completed in our maiden drilling program at Mt Deans.
“Our initial drilling represented just the start of exploration at the project, and based on the results, we moved quickly to undertake the surface sampling to investigate strike variations in grades.”
In March, the minnow briefly hit six-year highs after intercepting a highlight 5m at 50g/t gold in maiden drilling at the ‘Salmon Gums’ project.
The $13m market cap AAJ is up 14% year-to-date. It had $5m in the bank at the end of March.
Last week, LIN went on a high-volume share price run on no news, which prompted a short “please explain” from the ASX. We now know why.
The bauxite explorer’s share price smashed through eight-year highs today after it reached an out-of-court settlement over a protracted 2018 dispute over the ‘Kangankunde’ rare earths project in Malawi.
In 2018, the vendors of Kangankunde — one of the world’s largest rare earths projects outside of China – tried to change key terms of the deal after an agreement was signed.
Under the terms of the settlement, proceedings will be discontinued in exchange for LIN being provided with a 60-day exclusivity period to negotiate the terms of a legally-binding deal to acquire the project.
The proposed purchase could cost LIN $US30m in cash.
$57m market cap LIN is up 163% year-to-date. It had $342,000 in the bank at the end of March.
The Brazil focused gold explorer pulled up thin but high-grade palladium and platinum in drilling at the flagship ‘Três Estados’ project.
The results from TED 001, drilled in the 2021 drilling programme at the Tabocal prospect, included 2m @ 0.98g/t gold, 4.43g/t palladium and 10.82g/t platinum from 37m.
The mineralisation at BBX’s projects is weird. An ongoing test work program has been designed to fine-tune a preferred extraction technique.
The adopted method consists of smelting samples with a nickel ‘collector’. This is followed by initial digestion of the resulting nickel button to remove nickel, and then a subsequent digestion of the residue containing the precious metals that remained after filtration. The final solution is then assayed by a conventional fire assay/AA finish.
It is early days, but BBX is excited, CEO Andre J Douchane says.
“This is only the second hole of 82 that need to be analysed. There will be many more assays in the coming days – almost exclusively from Três Estados,” he says.
“The Tres Estados prospect, which has 44 drill holes in it, was chosen by the technical team as potentially having the best area to quickly develop a JORC resource on.
“The next 20 or so drill holes analysed will either prove that assumption correct or not.”
The resurgent $78m market cap explorer is up 10% in 2022. It had $1.1m in the bank at the end of March, plus a financing facility worth $9.95m.
(Up on no news)
Shares in PTR went ballistic in April on a major rare earth discovery at the Comet project within the Northern Gawler Craton of South Australia.
Shallow RAB drilling tested the top three metres of the prospective clay horizon where mineralisation encountered “impressive concentrations of high-value REEs”.
All 44 holes returned strong results with 23 holes hitting TREO > 1,000ppm, with PTR describing these intersections as “similar in characteristics and grades to ion-absorption rare earth deposits of China”.
China, which dominates global REE mining and processing, gets most of its supply from clay deposits in Southern China and neighbouring Myanmar.
PTR kicked off 10,000m of follow-up drilling last week. It is envisaged that the drill program will take about 6-7 weeks to complete with drill sample batches delivered to ALS laboratories for analysis every two weeks.
The $27m market cap stock is up 200% year-to-date. It had $2.2m in the bank at the end of March.
NOW READ: Why are ASX stocks so in love with clay rare earths projects? A punter’s guide
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