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Mining
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Friday March 11.
The company has intersected significant visible gold in the deepest hole drilled to date at its Alexander River project in New Zealand.
SNG is focused on exploring the rich Reefton gold district on the South Island of New Zealand – an area which has already delivered 2Moz across 84 historical mines.
Notably the Reefton goldfield was once part of the huge Victorian goldfield in Australia and has geological similarity to the 4.5m ounce Fosterville Gold Mine in Victoria owned by Kirkland Lake Gold (AX:KLA).
The maiden mineral resource estimate for Alexander River is expected in April, along with the process plant scoping study and the Alexander River and Big River scoping study.
SNG says this demonstrates that not only will a significant amount of work will have been completed in a little over 12 months since listing, it also demonstrates the significant future potential of the company with a gold price over A$2,500/oz.
SNG is up 14% on its October 2020 IPO price of 25c per share and had a cash balance at 31 December of $5.725m.
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In February last year, the iron ore explorer signed a deal to hopefully commercialise its Mariposa 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 US90/t.
In its Dec quarterly the company said it is “now progressing to settling a final Joint Venture Agreement between the Company and Hainan”.
“In parallel with settling the Joint Venture Agreement with Hainan, ADY and Hainan have continued to progress towards commencement of construction activities at Mariposa – now expected to commence by the end of May 2022,” it says.
“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.”
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Emerging lithium producer SYA has doubled its lithium resource base across two flagship projects in Québec, Canada – the North American Lithium and Authier Lithium projects – amid surging demand for the commodity.
Total JORC combined measured, indicated, and inferred mineral resources for the two projects now totals 119.1Mt at 1.05% lithium.
Fellow ASX lister Piedmont Lithium (ASX:PLL) owns 25% stake in the project.
SYA managing director Brett Lynch said this expansion is a “major achievement” for the company as it continues to enlarge its lithium footprint.
“With lithium prices surging on the back of an increasing structural supply deficit, our upcoming definitive feasibility study for an integrated NAL-Autheir operation, expected in coming weeks, is set to show significantly enhanced profitability for the benefit of shareholders.”
The Authier project, acquired back in July 2016, is a hard rock spodumene lithium deposit with near term development potential.
A DFS was completed on the project in 2019 highlighting a net present value of C$216 million, pre-tax internal rate of return of 33.9% and estimated capital payback of 2.7 years based on an annual average spodumene production of 114,116 tonnes at 6% lithium.
SYA acquired the North American Lithium Project back in August 2021 and is undertaking a scoping study to produce spodumene concentrate from 2023.
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The company’s projects in the Ashburton and Great Southern are prospective for gold while its Kimberley and Darling Range projects are prospective for base metals such as copper, nickel, PGEs and manganese.
To date, it has kicked off three out of four, and MD Mike Dunbar says airborne geophysics will be completed at the remaining Kimberley project this year.
In January sampling at Ashburton Gold Project has identified a gold anomaly measuring approximately 300m by 200m.
Also in January, drilling at the Calyerup Creek project in the Great Southern returned high-grade shallow gold with hits of up to 15m at 2.2g/t gold from 1m, including 3m at 3.53g/t.
And earlier this month the company intersected more shallow gold in the follow up drill program at Calyerup Creek, including 9m at 2.5g/t gold from 6m and 5m at 1.1g/t gold from surface.
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The Queensland focused gold-copper explorer plans to kick off 4,000m of RC drilling and 200m diamond core drilling at its Gilberton gold project towards the end of this month/early April, subject to finalisation of a date for the Heritage survey with the Ewamian.
AIV is also planning initial exploration – geological mapping and surficial geochemical exploration – at its Georgetown gold and lithium project in April.
The company recently converted its 49% equity in the Ravenswood gold project to 2,000,000 fully paid ordinary shares in listed Ballymore Resources (ASX:BMR) who have an active exploration program planned for 2022.
And AIV nabbed $3 million from the sale of its Cloncurry project to unlisted explorer Fetch Metals, who are planning to list on the ASX in the first half of 2022.
The company also expects exploration to commence later this year at its Pentland gold JV with Rockland Resources, to advance several porphyry copper gold targets.
The ~$10m market cap company saw its shares rise 14.5% in early trade this morning.
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