- Barra begins mining at historic Burbanks gold project
- Orminex hits high grade gold at advanced Penny’s Find project
- Cullen is drilling a conductor near Chalice’s Julimar discovery next week
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Friday April 30.
Underground mining will start imminently at the 20,200oz ‘Main Lode’, part of Barra’s historic, high grade Burbanks gold project in WA.
In April 2020, Barra inked an exploration and mining JV over the Burbanks project with privately owned miner and processor FMR Investments.
As part of the deal, FMR funds drilling and mining costs but the first $8m in profits go into a ‘future fund’ for deep exploration below historic workings.
Mining of the Main Lode will be treated as a 12-month trial mining operation, designed to understand the larger orebody and develop underground drilling platforms for ‘step out’ exploration.
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~$10m market cap Terrain is hoping for a gamechanger.
Last week, follow-up drilling kicked off at the ‘Smokebush’ gold project in WA. This drilling is designed to test how big the Monza (13 holes) and Paradise City (4 holes) targets are.
Notable results from 2020 drilling at the Monza prospect included:
- 4m at 4.46g/t gold, including 1m at 10.3g/t, from 51m;
- 7m at 2.72g/t, including 1m at 11.1g/t, from 25m; and
- 6m at 2.12g/t, including 1m at 7.2g/t, from 80m.
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The newly listed Chile-focused gold and copper explorer has three projects including ‘Capote’, where recent sampling indicated extensive, widespread surface high-grade copper-silver-lead-zinc mineralisation.
Samples returned peak assays of 5.53% copper, 12.6g/t gold, 81.3g/t silver, 14.25% lead, and 3.9% zinc.
Capote — untouched for almost 70 years and never explored by modern means — is home to the historic San Juan gold mine, where 500,000 ounces of gold was produced at an ore grade of 40 grams per tonne through to 1954.
In December, this former struggler sold 50% of its undeveloped 248,000oz Penny’s Find gold mine for $1.5m to Horizon Minerals (ASX:HRZ), which will shell out another $1m to fund early development.
Two weeks ago, the JV reported multiple significant drilling intercepts testing for the edges of this gold system, including 5m @ 5.27g/t gold from 180.3m and 3.7m @ 7.46g/t gold from 215.3m.
Today, they announced more high grade hits from the remaining eight holes of the program.
With all results received, the focus is now on compiling an updated mineral resource to be delivered in the current June quarter, Orminex says.
“We are excited to see the outcome of the updated resource model and look forward to working with our JV partner on optimising the mine plan as we progress towards a decision to mine in the second half of 2021,” non-exec director Dean Hely says.
Industrious prospect generator Cullen Resources is focused on three early stage WA projects: Wongan Hills, Barlee, and Yornup.
At Wongan Hills – near Chalice’s (ASX:CHN) Julimar discovery — a strong 340m long ground EM conductor detected at the ‘Rupert’ gold-base metals prospect will be drilled in the coming week.
Ground EM will also kick off at the nearby ‘Jackaby’ nickel-copper-PGE prospect, subject to landowner access.
At Barlee, follow-up mapping and rock chip sampling will kick off next week targeting Penny West-type gold lodes.
Data compilation and first pass soil and rock-chip sampling is also planned at Yornup – which adjoins a Chalice-Venture Minerals (ASX:VMS) nickel-copper-PGE project.