• Southern Hemisphere Mining surges on funding and copper-resource expanding news
  • Errawarra makes its nickel and lithium-hunting goals clear to investors
  • The lithium-digging drills are spinning for Balkan in Ontario

 

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Friday September 8.

 

 

Southern Hemisphere Mining (ASX:SUH)

Copper hunter Southern Hemisphere’s SUH stock has been surging on the back of, first of all some funding news, and secondly, a substantial resource increase in the company’s flagship Llahuin copper project in Chile.

Regarding the first point, that’s actually news from midweek, but the gist is this…

In relation to a shortfall from the company’s pro-rata non-renounceable entitlement offer in July this year, Southern Hemisphere Mining has received binding commitments for the shortfallen securities, raising additional funds of more than $1.27m.

In total, the company advises it’s now successfully raised the full amount of $2.36m offered under the entitlement offer. And this will help enable the following…

Drilling at the Llahuin project is set to substantially increase the existing resource towards a 25 year-mine life, and this is piquing the interest of copper-hungry majors.

Chile, our special report on SUH this week notes, is the world’s largest copper producer and Southern Hemisphere’s Llahuin currently boasts a very large, open-pittable resource of 169Mt at 0.4% copper equivalent.

Deposits at the Llahuin copper project. Pic: Supplied (SUH).

A bit more from our deeper-digging report:

Llahuin has a resource of 686,000t copper equivalent (comprising 470,000t of copper and 717,000oz of gold) at 0.28% copper equivalent cut-off grade.

The project is also located just 5km from access to grid power, 200km to Coquimbo Port and about 20km from a sealed airstrip.

Whilst this is a superb combination of factors to have in a resource project, the company has plans to make it even more attractive.

The company has just completed a rights issue to raise $2.36m (see above) to support drilling at the Llahuin project that will seek to increase the resource to a 25 year mine-life.

Southern Hemisphere expects to start the initial 2,500m diamond drilling program at Llahuin in October.

SUH share price

 

Errawarra Resources (ASX:ERW)

WA focused explorer (mainly nickel and lithium at present, but also gold and graphite), is up, following the company’s positivity-packed annual report, which dropped an hour before the market closed yesterday.

The report provides a clear roadmap up front in Executive Chairman Thomas Reddicliffe’s letter to shareholders, which notes:

• The company’s main focus over the past year has been to secure the Andover West tenement in the Pilbara, where it is hunting “compelling nickel targets”…

• … as well as digging into some pretty compelling lithium nearology, too – what with the Azure Minerals (ASX:AZS) lithium success story being pretty much adjacent.

• Further exploration at the gold, nickel, graphite focused Errabiddy project is ongoing.

• Meanwhile, “the company has reviewed its commitment to its foundation projects at Binti Binti and Fraser Range, and is actively seeking to sell or Joint Venture these projects.”

The other day, ERW surged upwards after Errawarra closed a heavily-oversubscribed placement early, receiving commitments for $4.25 million from sophisticated investors to fund and accelerate its exploration.

This came through a placement of shares through clients of CPS Capital Group.

Regarding the Andover West project, Reddicliffe added:

“The Company is continuing to assess the lithium prospectivity of pegmatites on the company’s Andover West project tenement.

“[The] pegmatite exploration is at an early stage, but it has been established that some of the pegmatites analysed to date have geochemical affinities to lithium pegmatites (LCT).”

ERW share price

 

Balkan Mining and Minerals (ASX:BMM)

Lithium hunter BMM was an early mover this morning, up on news that the drills are spinning for its phase 1 drill program at the Gorge Lithium Project located in Ontario, Canada.

The $4.18m market-capping minnow recently received an exploration permit for the Gorge project, which puts it in among plenty of other ASX-listed explorers of various size all jostling for Canadian-sourced batter-metal goodness.

The exploration permit, granted by the Ontario Ministry of Mines, is effective for a period of three years and allows the company to get cracking on an extensive drill program, which it’s clearly doing today.

The Gorge drilling campaign will be testing outcropping spodumene pegmatite at the Koshman and Nelson lithium occurrences.

BMM plans to initially drill up to 12 diamond drill holes for a total downhole length of up to 1,000m to systematically test the vertical plunge extensions along prospective pegmatite strike.

The company notes that it’s “active engagement and communication with local First Nation communities” has helped accelerate pre-drilling and preparation activities.

“Since acquiring option rights over the project in July 2022, our highly encouraging preliminary exploration work has seen Gorge become rated as a high-priority lithium exploration opportunity,” said Ross Cotton, Balkan’s managing director.

BMM share price

 

Reach Resources (ASX:RR1)

(Up on no fresh news today, but…)

As RR1 revealed earlier this week, and as we reported yesterday… Reach Resources has intersected multiple, thick, staked pegmatites in Phase 1 drilling at the Bonzer prospect, within the Morrissey Hill lithium project in the emerging Gascoyne lithium region in WA.

Maybe this information has taken a while to… reach lithium-stock-hungry investors, because the RR1 stock is finally beginning to see some action off the back of the company’s good news.

As our report noted, the company’s Morrissey Hill, Camel Hill and Wabli Creek projects are right next door to the Delta Lithium (ASX:DLI) Malinda project, where multiple mineralised projects “with commercial scale opportunity and strikes exceeding 1600 metres length” have been confirmed.

The Morrissey Hill project is also near Liontown spin-off and Tim Goyder-backed Minerals 260 (ASX:MI6) tenements.

“The extensive soil sampling campaign conducted at Morrissey Hill prior to the commencement of drilling is paying dividends,” said CEO Jeremy Bower.

“We are very happy to confirm that the outcropping pegmatites are being repeated with substantial widths at depth within the right host rocks.

“In addition, diamond drill core is confirming blind pegmatites exist in the area, which is extremely promising and consistent with the geology at neighbouring Delta Lithium’s Malinda lithium project.”

Blind pegmatites occur where there are no pegmatite or anomalous assays present at surface.

The company has more diamond drilling scheduled at Morrissey Hill in October.

RR1 share price

 

Western Yilgarn (ASX:WYX)

(Up on no news)

WYX has nothing particularly new to report today that would be giving it a share-price bump. But, up double digits it’s rising at the time of writing regardless.

There was this from earlier this week…

… which focused, in part, on the WA explorer’s recent good news regarding multiple targets identified for drilling at its Bulga mining project, where it’s going for a variety of minerals, including nickel, copper, gold and… yes, lithium, too.

Meanwhile, the company is itching to get cracking at its Julimar West nickel project, as adjacent neighbour Chalice Mining (ASX:CHN)‘s Gonneville project has, despite a recent disappointing scoping study that tanked its share price, been proving up resources that continue to trend into Western Yilgarn tenements.

Meanwhile, Western Yilgarn’s Sylvania project, which is a little south of Newman in the Pilbara region, had a recent (couple of weeks ago) site-access-mobilisation update regarding negotiations with the Karlka Nyiyaparli Aboriginal Corporation (KNAC), the Aboriginal custodians of the land underlying the Sylvania Project leases.

A collaborative partnership has been formed between the two entities, allowing the company to undertake “low impact exploration activities” in the area and within the agreed leases.

The first such campaign is set to begin in October and will last 10 days.

WYX share price

 

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Southern Hemisphere Mining, Reach Resources and Western Yilgarn are Stockhead advertisers at the time of writing, none of them sponsored this article. 

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