Resources Top 5: These ASX rare earths, gold, and lithium stocks are ending the week on a high note

Mamba Exploration to drill super high grade rare earths target this month
Aruma Resources now up ~30% since announcing high-grade lithium-rubidium drill results at the Mt Deans project earlier this week
Greenwing Resources completes $12m placement to Chinese EV maker NIO

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in morning trade, Friday January 13.

MAMBA EXPLORATION (ASX:M24)

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This WA focused explorer has a bunch of rare earths prospects in the portfolio, including the recently acquired 1,300km2 Hyden project in the State’s south.

M24 says a zone of very high-grade rare earths up to 46,000ppm has already been identified in clays from early sampling.

Clay deposits usually grade between 800-2,000ppm, so this is unusual – the company believes the source of the TREO in the clay could be a nearby hard rock system (either REE pegmatite or a carbonatite).

“Given most clay hosted REO mineralisation tends to be between 800 and 2,000ppm TREO, to have identified a zone of 46,700ppm, or 4.67 per cent TREO in clays from the very limited sampling represents a very compelling target,” M24 managing director Mike Dunbar said.

M24 has committed to drill at least 10 holes and expend at least $25,000 on exploration at Hyden prior to the end of January 2023.

PANTERA MINERALS (ASX:PFE)

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At the end of December, Pantera jumped straight into sampling and mapping activities over three newly granted exploration tenements at the Weelarrana project in WA, where the company is proving up some manganese and gold-silver drill targets.

PFE will also conduct multi-element soil sampling over previously announced anomalous gold-silver rock chip results of 2.44 parts per million (ppm) silver and 0.18ppm gold.

“We are delighted to have had three tenements granted at Weelarrana, allowing us to commence further on-ground exploration immediately at our Weelarrana manganese project,” chief executive officer Matt Hansen said.

“We believe this project area holds significant potential for the discovery of high grade manganese mineralisation, and this exploration program will allow us to fast-track the development of drill targets within the recently granted tenements in addition to our current drill targets on E 52/3878.”

ARUMA RESOURCES (ASX:AAJ)

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Shares in this lithium stock bounced on Wednesday morning after drilling into high-grade lithium-rubidium at the Mt Deans Project in WA.

Results include a highlight 8 at 1.89% Li2O+RB2O from 26m.

Overall, the program returned lithium-rubidium grades in excess of 2%, with a total of 12 intersections with grades in excess of 1.5% lithium-rubidium of varying widths.

Also of note is the high potassium values of up to 3.6%, with significant cesium (up to 0.6%) and tin-tantalum (600ppm and 700ppm).

KALGOORLIE GOLD MINING (ASX:KAL)

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This ~$6.56m explorer – a spinout of battery metals play Ardea Resources (ASX:ARL) — has accumulated over 1,000sqkm around Kalgoorlie, the gold capital of Australia.

The company’s primary focus is the ‘Bulong Taurus’ project, just 35km east of the City of Kalgoorlie Boulder.

Historically, Ardea’s focus at Bulong was the high-grade laterite hosted nickel-cobalt. There has been minimal gold exploration in recent decades.

And yet the full 18km strike length of the ‘Goddard Fault’ within KAL’s tenure has historic gold shafts, current alluvial gold workings and historic non-JORC compliant mineral resource estimates at the ‘Central and ‘Great Ophir’ prospects.

A debut JORC resource at the 700m-long and growing La Mascotte prospect is coming soon, the company says.

GREENWING RESOURCES (ASX:GW1)

On September 26, 2022 GW1 entered into a strategic funding transaction with Chinese EV maker NIO through its wholly owned subsidiary, Blue Northstar (NIO).

GW1 has finally completed the placement of 21,818,182 fully paid ordinary shares to NIO for A$12m.

The company has also granted a call option to NIO to acquire, at NIO’s election, between 20% to 40% of the issued capital of Andes Litio SA, which holds options rights over the San Jorge Lithium Project.