Resources Top 5: Let’s spin it out

• Liontown Resources to demerge Julimar nearology assets
• New zinc explorer Albion moves higher on no news
• Accelerate exits Tasmania to focus on WA projects

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Friday June 4.

LIONTOWN RESOURCES (ASX: LTR)

(Up on no news)

Liontown was one of the largest exploration stocks to climb sharply this morning as investors digested news from Thursday it was planning a spinoff of its Julimar-style Moora and Koojan JV projects in the WA Wheatbelt.

The company is best known as a $1 billion capped lithium developer, and holds the Kathleen Valley deposit in the northern WA Goldfields.

While it has an updated DFS under preparation at Kathleen Valley, Liontown has been doing some work at Moora on the northern end of the Julimar trend.

That, as you know, hosts Chalice Mining’s (ASX: CHN) world class palladium-nickel-copper find north of Perth.

With Chalice’s Tim Goyder the chairman and an 18 per cent holder of Liontown, they are well placed to leverage off any success in the region.

Moora, marketed as a gold, PGE, nickel, copper project, is previously unexplored with “exceptional” early results of 43m at 1.7g/t of gold.

ALBION RESOURCES (ASX: ALB)

(Up on no news)

Albion Resources listed at the end of April with the aim of identifying Mississippi-style zinc deposits in the Kimberley.

It doesn’t have bad ground either, exploring Pillara East, previously held by base metals majors BHP and Western Areas.

With little news to report Albion has drifted south since listing but enjoyed a ~25 per cent bump in early trade this morning.

Albion’s one spot of news last month came around three weeks ago in the form of historic sample results at its Pillara East project.

Grades reported were up to 3.66 per cent copper, 36 per cent lead and 27.5 per cent zinc.

With hot equity markets supporting any number of IPOs these days there seems to be little point keeping an unloved asset on the books.

Accelerate Resources is the latest tiddler to support a new float via a divestment, with the explorer looking to move its Mt Read copper project out into new vehicle Stunalara Metals.

Stunalara has been given a four-month option to complete due diligence on Mt Read before it decides whether to issue Accelerate up to $1 million in shares in a proposed IPO to take full control of the asset.

That means Accelerate will not entirely abandon the Apple Isle by keeping some exposure in the new listed entity.

The deal will allow Accelerate to focus on its key Tambellup kaolin project and Comet gold project near Cue, both in Western Australia.

Pan Asia Metals (ASX: PAM)

(Up on no news)

This junior has a fair bit on the go in Thailand.

It has been poking some diamond drill holes around its Reung Kiet and Bang I Tum lithium prospects.

The latter was, like the Greenbushes mine in WA’s south, once a relatively large open cut tin mine.

PAM has also discovered what the company calls “potentially world class” tungsten prospects at its Khao Soon tungsten project.

(Up on no news)

Diatreme Resources is planning to export silica to the Asian solar energy industry through its Galacar silica project in Queensland.

This month the company announced an MoU to supply 250,000 tonnes a year of “photovoltaic grade” silica to China’s Jiangxi Kangjia New Material Technology Co.

The microcap, which held its AGM last week without incident, also has MoUs signed with two other customers.