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Mining
Here’s your top ASX small cap resources winners in morning trade Tuesday, December 29.
Post-Christmas news flow is typically sparse, and this year is no different. Today’s biggest gainers are up on recent (or no) news.
In December, explorer Santana drilled into ~28m thick gold mineralised zones at the newly acquired Bendigo-Ophir project in New Zealand.
This drilling was designed to test extensions to the existing ~250,000oz resource, which Santana reckons could be developed into a bulk tonnage low-cost open pit heap leach operation.
Initial gold assays are expected in about three weeks and drilling will continue from mid-January 2021.
Bonus fact: Santana is chaired by famous high profile mining personality Norman Seckold.
The Legacy share price has been jumping all over the shop for weeks on abnormally high volumes.
Why? Not really sure. But with iron ore prices hitting record highs punters may be speculating that the ostensibly gold focused explorer will dust off its Mt Bevan project in WA.
Mt Bevan – besides a large, low grade magnetite resource – includes a decent chunk of Jupiter Mines’ (ASX:JMS) neighbouring high grade deposit.
Victoria-based Latrobe Magnesium (ASX:LMG) expects to be a very low cost magnesium producer.
LMG expects to start construction of 3,000tpa pilot plant (a smaller version of the real thing) in March 2021 and be in production by Q2 2022.
The timing is good – the company says magnesium demand is about to fly partially due to its increased use in cars and batteries.
Last week, Congo-based AVZ – a former high profile darling of the circa 2018’s lithium wave – locked in an offtake agreement with Chinese lithium giant Ganfeng.
AVZ’s still-undeveloped Manano project will sell 160,000 tonnes per year of spodumene concentrate – 30 per cent of planned production — to Ganfeng for an initial five years.
“This … offtake agreement with GFL will greatly assist the company in meeting any conditions precedent that are required for our prospective financiers,” AVZ boss Nigel Ferguson says.
“Over the coming months, I look forward to finalising other offtake agreements which are currently under negotiation, not only for our lithium products but also for our tin and tantalum materials,” AVZ boss Nigel Ferguson says.
The stock — which peaked at ~34c per share in 2018 – has gained 55 per cent to 14c per share over the past week.
Last week, Pensana hit high grade rare earths in the first sampling program at its Coola Project, 16km from its flagship Longonjo project in Angola.
It also appointed “accomplished economic geologist” Grant Hayward as exploration manager and completed a drilling program at Longonjo.
The stock is currently up +870 per cent over the past 12 months.
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