Resources Top 5: The ASX’s newest lithium explorer is already up 76pc

NT lithium explorer Evergreen is enjoying a strong started to listed life, up 70% on its IPO price of 25c/sh
Elmore came out of a lengthy suspension yesterday after finalising the acquisition of the Peko magnetite mine
Up on no news: Auking (uranium), Dundas (nickel, gold), Metal Hawk (nickel, gold)

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Thursday April 13.

EVERGREEN LITHIUM (ASX:EG1)

The IPO market has been a wasteland in 2023, which makes EG1’s first week performance a sight for sore eyes.

The NT lithium explorer is enjoying a strong started to listed life, up 76% on its IPO price of 25c/sh.

Its flagship Bynoe lithium project is adjacent to Core Lithium’s (ASX:CXO) ramping up Finniss mine, which has a maiden 3500t shipment ready to go at Darwin port.

But EG1 chief technical advisor Jason Ward says Bynoe is more than just about being next door to a new lithium mine.

“The initial geochemistry found really big lithium anomalies and they appear to be right next to Core Lithium’s anomalies and contiguous with them,” he told Stockhead.

“It’s not simply a nearology play, they’re contiguous geochemical samples to their mine.

“Right up in the north where they’re mining the Grants deposit, we see some northeast trending features and that correlates well with our lithium in soil anomalies there.

“The other one is right next to their BP33 deposit, where we appear to have contiguous geochemical samples right next to that as well.”

EG1 – which has ~$10m in the bank — also has a WA lithium project called Kenny, where results of an augur drilling project are due in the next few weeks.

ELMORE (ASX:ELE)

The small miner came out of a lengthy suspension yesterday after finalising the acquisition of the Peko mine after spending 12 months building and commissioning operations as a contractor.

While ELE will initially focus on producing a high value iron magnetite product from the NT mine, it also plans to produce copper, cobalt and gold from a tailings deposit.

This stockpile contains ~129,000oz gold, 8100t copper and 3500t cobalt, according to a September resource update.

A second magnetite shipment – delayed by bad weather – is now ready for loading at the Darwin port, with over 27,800 tonnes stored in the minerals shed and more product outside remaining to be discharged from the rail containers.

The ship is scheduled to arrive in port on Thursday 13 April 2023.

ELE gets a premium for this high-grade product with pricing confirmed at AU$202/t.

Elmore is a reskinned iron ore miner called NSL/IndiOre, a source of controversy in early 2019 when drilling at the flagship Kurnool project in India failed to find any economic mineralisation – after plans had been made to expand production to ~400,000tpa.

At this point, processing plant equipment had already been ordered and millions in capital raised.

The incumbent MD/CEO and non-exec chairman had also resigned “effectively immediately” just months prior to the drilling results being made public.

The project was dumped completely, and an independent review initiated “into the history that has led to the decision to build the project, in particular the P3 expansion, without sufficient defined resources”.

Madness.

The $15m capped stock is down 10% year-to-date. It had $1.7m in the bank at the end of December.

DUNDAS MINERALS (ASX:DUN)

Last week, the nickel, copper and gold explorer kicked off early-stage soil sampling in the northwest section of its namesake project in the Albany-Fraser Orogen of WA.

This area contains two combined gravity and magnetic anomalies that trend northwest-southeast over considerable strike length plus a combined gravity and magnetic anomaly trending northeast-southwest.

“The anomalies are interpreted as possible mafic and/or ultramafic rocks, a possible host for gold, copper or nickel mineralisation,” DUN says.

“Except for a limited part of Area 2, Dundas Minerals is not aware of any prior on-ground exploration work having been undertaken in these portions of its project tenements.

“This makes this program an important next step is assessing the area’s prospectivity.”

The program will wrap up at the end of April, with assays due 6-8 weeks thereafter.

DUN briefly soared September last year after a 37m deep water bore hole at the Central prospect, some 120km southwest of the now IGO (ASX:IGO) owned Nova mine, unexpectedly hit 20m of visual sulphide mineralisation.

Portable XRF readings picked up low grade cobalt, nickel, copper and silver, the company announced. Within two days its shares had climbed 250%.

The run extended a fortnight later when Dundas announced — with an appropriate disclaimer that visual mineralisation was not a proxy for assay results — that it had hit 358m of massive, semi-massive and disseminated sulphides in the first diamond hole at Central. Dundas shares hit an all time high of 86c.

But air escaped from that balloon soon after when it was revealed the XRF results from bore hole were, by and large, several times higher than the assays.

READ: Why XRF and visual mineralisation don’t always add up to a discovery

The $8m capped stock is up 6% year-to-date. It had $3.3m in the bank at the end of December.

AUKING MINING (ASX:AKN)

(Up on no news)

The junior said it would take “an aggressive approach to exploration” after completing the all-share $6m purchase of four uranium and two copper projects in Tanzania early 2023.

The four uranium projects — Mkuju, Manyoni, Itigi and Magaga — are either nearby or include areas subject to significant prior exploration and development up until 2012/2013, the company says.

The projects were purchased from mysterious tenement merchant and new AKN co-chair Asimwe Kabunga.

AKN will hand over a bunch of shares which will give Kabunga a 19.69% stake in the company.

Perth-based Kabunga has previously vended African projects into fellow small cap explorers Volt Resources (ASX:VRC), Lindian Resources (ASX:LIN) and Resource Mining Corp (ASX:RMI).

He also sits on the board of all three companies.

AKN recently raised $2.13m to drill Mkuju and Manyoni, where the company is already fighting battles over two areas allocated to both AKN and another company ‘by mistake’.

Meanwhile, a scoping study for a proposed gold mine at the Koongie Park project in WA is due out very soon.

The $16m capped stock is down 24% year-to-date.

METAL HAWK (ASX:MHK)

(Up on no news)

In September 2021, MHK spiked over 250% in one day – from 19c to 68c — after uncovering Kambalda-style nickel in maiden drilling at the ‘Berehaven’ project near Kalgoorlie.

Follow up exploration didn’t tick the right boxes for investors, and the share price dropped almost as fast.

Exploration is ongoing though, with drilling kicking off late March to test priority nickel sulphide targets and some new untested high-grade gold anomalies.

MHK also has another interesting iron in the fire – namely, exploration joint ventures worth $9.75 million with IGO (ASX:IGO) and Chalice (ASX:CHN) gold spinoff Falcon Metals (ASX:FAL).

The $10m market cap stock is down 15% year-to-date. It has about $1.7m in the bank at the end of December.