6 Feb 2002: Australia's first ever Winter Gold medal winner Steven Bradbury crosses the line while America's Apolo Anton Ohno scrambles for the line to claim second place after the men's 1000m speed skating final during the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games at the Salt Lake Ice Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Credit: Steve Munday/Getty Images
Mining
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Friday May 6.
(Up on no news)
Yesterday, explorer TMX – which is on the lookout for new projects — picked up the 320sqkm ‘Lort River’ project prospective for clay-hosted rare earths near Esperance in WA.
“The new tenements are all situated between other ASX explorers who have already demonstrated the existence of clay hosted REE within the region,” TMX says.
“Terrain’s geologists are currently conducting a comprehensive data review and the market will be updated in due course of their findings.”
TMX continues to investigate potential projects across various commodities including gold, copper, nickel, and other industrial minerals, REE and PGEs in Australia and other jurisdictions like Africa, Continental Europe, and the Americas.
“Terrain is currently advancing conversations and investigating several opportunities offshore,” it says.
The $9m market cap tiddler is up 20% year-to-date. It had $1.2m in the bank at the end of march.
(Up on no news)
LDR listed mid-2021 with three main projects – ‘Uralla’ (gold), ‘Fender’ (base metals) and ‘Webbs Consol’ (silver, zinc) — in the underexplored New England Fold Belt of NSW, north of the better-known Lachlan Fold.
Recent phase 1 drilling at Webbs Consol’s historical ‘Main Shaft’ prospect hit some thick high-grade numbers, including a highlight 27.50m @ 467g/t AgEq or 9.44% ZnEq from 104.6m.
LDR is currently drilling a bunch of high priority targets including several shafts with a history of high-grade silver production along a 3km strike.
It’s a similar story at Fender, where prior to a recent campaign by LDR the ‘Trough Gully Mine’ had never been drilled despite a history of copper production that occurred periodically in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
An intercept of 7.30m @ 9.47% ZnEq was located 30m below the deepest historical mine workings and demonstrates potential at depth, LDR says.
“It is evident that at both Trough Gully and Lode’s Webbs Consol Base Metal Projects, zinc was not a metal sought after during the late 1800s and early 1900s,” it says.
“As such it was not highlighted in historical records. This oversight has been exacerbated by an almost total absence of modern exploration, especially drilling.
“It implies that the overall mineral potential for a number of metal occurrences in the Fender Copper Project and others owned by Lode may be highly underestimated.”
Fender also encompasses numerous copper occurrences and copper drainage anomalism over large areas, the company says.
The $7.12m market cap stock is down 18% year-to-date. It had $2.9m in the bank at the end of March.
(Up on no news)
Project generator AQD has a longstanding strategic exploration alliance (since Feb 2017) with major miner South32, which was recently extended for a further two years.
AQD basically acts as S32’s informal exploration division — it finds projects, does the early work, and if S32 likes them an earn-in agreement is formed.
Under the agreed joint venture terms, S32 must contribute $US4.5m to earn a 70% joint venture interest in each project. It can earn an 80% interest in each project by completing a pre-feasibility study.
Six of AusQuest’s projects in Australia and Peru are currently exploration opportunities under the alliance.
Last quarter this busy explorer kicked off 6-9 months of drilling, testing multiple copper-nickel-gold targets.
In Australia, results from ~1400m of drilling at the ‘Balladonia’ copper-nickel project in WA, and ~1850m at the ‘Hamiliton’ copper project in Queensland are expected in the current quarter.
In Peru, ~10,000m of drilling at the ‘Los Otros’ porphyry copper project will begin late in Q2.
The $20m market cap stock is up 10% year-to-date. It had $5.1m in the bank at the end of March.
(Up on no news)
Potash fertiliser prices are going through the roof, which puts this near term producer in a fairly good spot.
“The price impact of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia is impacting fertiliser prices globally and CRU considers potash is moving up on its lists of commodities most at risk,” DNK says in its latest quarterly.
DNK’s ‘Colluli’ potash project has the world’s largest JORC compliant reserve at 1.1Bt.
The downside is the location — Eritrea in Africa — which is governed by one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. Eritrea’s military is also one of the largest in Africa.
Which makes DNK a high risk, high reward investment.
The $100m market cap stock has been quiet in 2022, losing 33.75% of its value year-to-date. It had ~$19m in the bank at the end of March.
(Up on no news)
This minnow is looking for big iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) deposits in South Australia.
IOCGs — like BHP’s Olympic Dam mine or more recent Oak Dam discovery — can be super deep but tremendously large, and simple-to-process concentrations of copper, gold and other economic minerals.
The small explorer recently expanded its South Australian portfolio to include the ‘Warriner Creek’ prospect.
CHK says the target depth at Warriner Creek is shallower than its Olympic Domain tenements, where drilling at the promising Horse Well prospect is reaching +1.3km depth.
A shallower target depth means drilling at Warriner Creek will be significantly shorter, and cheaper.
Under the farm-in agreement two holes are planned, with the first to drilled to 658m depth late April. Assays are pending.
Drilling has also kicked off at Warriner Creek West where a 150–200m drill hole is planned to intersect a shallow target à la Oz Minerals’ (ASX:OZL) tier 1 Prominent Hill copper-gold mine.
The $21m market cap stock is up 20% year-to-date. It had $2.7m in the bank at the end of March.
