- Sunshine Metals continues to roar on the back of juicy gold hit at Liontown
- West African explorer Haranga in the spotlight as uranium spot price sails through US$80/lb for the first time in 12 years
- ASX’s newest resources stock, Chariot, hit with ASX speeding ticket ahead of lithium-focused drilling in Wyoming
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Monday November 27.
SUNSHINE METALS (ASX:SHN)
(Up on no news)
Sunshine has continued its golden run with investors this morning, having finished up 91% on Friday on the back of a mouthwatering intersection of 17m @ 22.14g/t gold at its Ravenswood Consolidated project in North Queensland
The company believes it may have struck paydirt in a gold and copper rich feeder zone to the 2.3Mt zinc-gold-copper-lead-silver VMS resource at the Liontown deposit.
“The stunning intercepts at Liontown are a great reward for the solid geological work completed by the team,” Sunshine managing director Damien Keys told the market on Friday.
“The decision was made to target the gold-copper rich footwall and feeder zones to the Liontown resource with a high impact, shallow RC program. The feeder zones have not been recognised by past explorers and are often difficult to target.”
Assays from a further 11 drill holes targeting the feeder zones and footwall lodes are due next month.
HARANGA RESOURCES (ASX:HAR)
(Up on no news)
With the uranium spot price sailing through US$80/lb for the first time in 12 years last week, investors are closely monitoring which slice of yellowcake will rise above the pack.
Today’s appetite appears to lie with Haranga which is advancing the Saraya uranium project in Senegal where a major auger drilling program is currently under way.
It has been a busy few months for the relative newcomer to the niche pod of ASX-listed uranium players with an inferred resource of 12.5Mt @ 587ppm eU3O8 for 16.1Mlb defined over Saraya, $2.86 million raised for the next phase of exploration and experienced uranium executive Peter Batten joined the company as managing director, all since the beginning of September.
Speaking to Stockhead recently about his appointment, Batten suggested his return to the yellowcake sector – he was previously managing director of Namibian uranium hopeful Bannerman Energy (ASX: BMN) in the mid-to-late 2000s – could not have be better timed, if market forecasts are to be believed.
“This next bull run in uranium has been coming since 2010,” Batten said.
“The fundamentals were building up, there was an 8-10Mlbpa shortfall, everybody was talking about the uranium cliff before Fukushima happened and all of a sudden there was 10Mlb of uranium floating in the system with no home to go to.
“There’s currently 458 operating reactors, there’s 58 under construction at the moment and there’s another 104 that are planned. So it does seem that this interest in uranium can be sustained.”
AFRICAN GOLD (A1G)
(Up on no news)
Aside from the obligatory quarterly report for the September period, the company’s last major announcement to the ASX was a series of intercepts from trenching at the Kouassi prospect, part of its Didievi gold project in Cote d’Ivoire.
Best intercepts included 13m @ 4.03g/t gold and 3m @ 3.53g/t gold. The company noted these can be considered as true thicknesses as mineralisation is subvertical.
Channel sampling also returned 9m @ 0.81g/t gold (including 4m @ 1.53g/t gold) and 8m @ 0.58g/t gold (including 2m @ 1.11g/t gold).
A solitary historical diamond drillhole at Kouassi returned intersections of 6m @ 1.82g/t gold from 89m, 11m @ 0.29g/t gold from 103m and 11m @ 1.85g/t gold from 128m.
Following the incumbent wet season, a gradient array IP survey is scheduled to take place over the Kouassi and adjacent Pranoi and Jimmy Walker prospects in order to better define the host structures and lithologies prior to further aircore and RC drilling.
ASPIRE MINING (ASX:AKM)
(Up on no news)
Chairman Michael Avery and the Aspire management team must have delivered some compelling presentations at Friday’s AGM as the company has largely been void of any major news flow regarding its Ovoot coking coal project in Mongolia this year.
The AGM was Avery’s first since being appointed chair in March. His arrival preceded the appointments of Samuel Bowles as CEO and Jules Grove as CFO just two months later.
In his chairman’s address, Avery described 2023 as a “transformational” year for Aspire despite an acknowledgement that “minimal capital” continues to be invested in either the development or expansion of coking coal projects globally, largely due to green policies not differentiating between coking and thermal coals.
“At the same time, the demand for coking coal continues to increase and remains an irreplaceable input into commercially viable processes of making steel, which is an essential material required to achieve many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,” Avery said.
“As a veteran of the coal industry, the prospect of developing the Ovoot project excites me tremendously. In my view, there are few, if any, greenfield coking coal deposits equal or better in terms of size, quality of proximity to market.”
Avery noted the company has achieved several milestones this year, including receiving final approvals for the detailed environmental impact assessment on the planned mining operations at Ovoot and a feasibility study for the construction and operation of a coal handling and preparation plant.
CHARIOT CORPORATION (ASX:CC9)
(Up on no news)
The ASX issued a speeding ticket to the newest resources stock on the block and, after responding to the price inquiry on Friday, Chariot has again picked up the pace and is showing no signs of slowing down.
Chariot announced on November 9 a surface diamond core drill rig had arrived at its flagship Black Mountain lithium project in Wyoming, US ahead of the Phase 1 campaign targeting outcropping spodumene-bearing LCT pegmatite dykes within a 1km long by 50-150m wide zone.
One of the biggest lithium IPOs of 2023 controls one of the largest lithium exploration landholdings in the US and this is the first time any drilling has been undertaken at Black Mountain where 60cm long spodumene crystals (6-7% lithium) were first observed back in 1997.
“It looks like Liontown’s (ASX: LTR) Kathleen Valley before it was drilled,” Chariot managing director Shanthar Pathmanathan told Stockhead’s Reuben Adams last week.
“It has 40 outcropping pegmatites in a 1.5km long strike across the mountain. We think they go down deep but we won’t know until we drill.”