• Matsa Resources keeps hitting thick gold at the Fortitude North discovery
  • Is aspiring gold producer Geopacific Resources bouncing from rock bottom?
  • Cazaly Resources defines untouched 2km long copper anomaly after picking up rock chips grading up to 32% Cu

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Thursday February 16.

 

MATSA RESOURCES (ASX:MAT)

The industrious explorer keeps hitting thick gold at the Fortitude North discovery, a stone’s throw from the company’s 489,000oz Fortitude gold mine in WA.

New highlights include 19m at 3.77g/t gold from 100m, incl. 14m at 4.59g/t.

A 1.6km-long system has been defined so far, and it remains open to the north.

This suggests that the remaining 1,792m of drilling, to be completed in March, “will unveil additional thick, high-grade shoots not yet defined by existing drilling”.

MAT says Fortitude North already looks bigger and better than the Fortitude mine.

“These results continue to support our view that Fortitude North is a bigger system than the Fortitude gold mine where Matsa has an established resource of 489,000oz and a 2021 mining study that indicates a positive cash flow of AUD$95m,” MAT boss Paul Poli says.

“The thicker intercepts in the high-grade shoots provide substantial volumes of gold not seen in previous drilling and certainly eclipse what we have seen at Fortitude gold mine.

“What is really exciting, is that the drilling previously completed to the north appears to have completely missed the orientation of these high-grade shoots.

“This new drilling emphatically indicates the system remains open to the north, potentially due to simple fault offset.”

MAT is increasingly confident of achieving its near-term goal of defining 1Moz at the wider Lake Carey project, Poli says.

The overall resource is currently 886,000oz at an ore grade of 2.4g/t.

“I want to reinforce that this year, we have set out a clear key objective for Matsa,” he says.

“We aim to deliver a maiden resource at Fortitude North and take our total Lake Carey gold project resource base to over 1 million ounces before mid-year. Never have I been more confident that we can deliver on this objective.”

The MAT share price also edged higher earlier this week after it discovered lithium-bearing pegmatites grading up to 7.4% Li2O across two prospects in Thailand.

The $20m capped stock is up ~50% on volume over the past week. It had $4.1m in the bank at the end of December.

 

ZEUS RESOURCES (ASX:ZEU)

(Up on no news)

ZEU is now up 160% on its recent $2.1m cap raise price of 1c per share.

The former Chinese-backed shell relisted on the ASX 8 February after ~15 months in suspension due to Listing Rule 17.3 – also known as ‘our projects are not adequate to warrant continued quotation’.

Following the cap raise, its focus is now the Lake Way (potash) and Mortimer Hills (lithium, manganese, base metals) projects in WA.

At Lake Way, early-stage drilling returned “encouraging” assays up to 3,340mg/L potassium and 24,000mg/L sulphate (equivalent to 7.4kg/m3 SOP).

Mortimer is next door to Red Dirt’s (ASX:RDT) Yinnietharra/Malinda lithium prospect, where recent drilling pulled up 55.6m at 1.12% Li2O from 94m.

 

NORDIC NICKEL (ASX:NNL)

The Finland-focused nickel sulphide explorer is currently at the RIU Explorers conference in Fremantle, spruiking its investment case.

Successfully, it would seem.

The June 2022 IPO has two main projects, Pulju and Maaninkijoki 3 (MJ3).

At Pulju, NLL has defined an initial 133.6Mt resource for 278,520t nickel and 12,560t cobalt at the Hotinvaara prospect, based on historical near surface drilling only.

Mineralisation here remains open along strike and at depth, with a recent NNL survey picking up some juicy conductors at ~400m, ~800m and ~1500m depth.

The 800m deep conductor is enormous at 1.2km by 1km.

More importantly, NNL says the prospect covers just 2% of the project area.

A drilling program is currently underway, with first assay results expected within 8-10 weeks. All up, 22,000m of drilling is planned at Hotinvaara over the next 14 months.

The $22m capped stock is up 90% year-to-date, and 52% on its IPO price of 25c per share. It had $9.75m in the bank at the end of December.

 

GEOPACIFIC RESOURCES (ASX:GPR)

(Up on no news)

Is this aspiring gold producer bouncing from rock bottom?

In February last year, a beleaguered GPR suspended development of its flagship 1.5Moz Woodlark gold project in PNG due to ballooning capital costs.

Things were fairly advanced at this point as well: a bunch of mining and processing equipment had already been procured, earthworks had begun, and relocation of the local population was underway.

Prior to this, the company had talked up the 100,000ozpa project’s strong economics, which included a post-tax NPV of $347m and an IRR of 34% at a gold price of A$2,200/oz.

The forecast average AISC was a solid $1,239/oz over the initial 13-year mine life.

“To put it bluntly, Geopacific Resources significantly underperformed in 2021,” said chairman Andrew Bantock May 31.

“And while the suspension of major development works at the Woodlark gold project in early 2022 was extremely disappointing for shareholders, I believe that further disappointment would have ensued if the board had simply decided to plough on.”

GPR came up with a recovery plan, which included 23km of drilling to better define high grade areas of the resource. A strategic review was also conducted following unsolicited approaches to the company.

“This resulted in the identification of potential development partners and dialogue is ongoing,” the company said earlier this week.

In 2023, GPR aims to release a “re-optimised” mining study based on a relocation of the processing plant and associated project infrastructure, along with the potential for staged development focused initially on the high-grade stuff.

The $14m capped stock is down 80% over the past year, and a whopping 96% over the past five years. It had $5.7m left in the bank at the end of December.

 

CAZALY RESOURCES (ASX:CAZ)

CAZ has defined a 2km long copper anomaly at Cheela, part of the 2450sqkm Ashburton project in the Pilbara, after picking up rock chips grading up to 32% copper.

This trend is essentially untouched, with limited historical drilling conducted to the southeast of the best rock chip results “failing to test the prospective stratigraphy”.

Meanwhile, EM surveys have defined three new, completely untested targets.

The company is modelling the EM anomalies to determine the size and geometry of any potential conductor targets for further follow-up.

It is anticipated that this will be completed in the coming weeks in time for the 2023 field season, it says.

“These initial EM targets are extremely encouraging especially with the nearby 2km copper trend containing extremely rich copper rock chips,” CAZ managing director Tara French says.

“Once again, our exploration results add valuable insights to the mineralisation potential of this very large land package we hold in the Ashburton Basin.”

CAZ is also working on a bunch of other assets, including the Halls Creek project, which has a resource of 262,000t copper metal. In Namibia, the company is hunting for rare earths and lithium.

The $12m capped stock is up 13% year-to-date. It had $4.5m in the bank at the end of December.

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