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Resources Top 5: These two ASX precious metals hunters are flying, up 220% and 230% YTD
Mining
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- Small caps Lode Resources (silver), Truscott Mining (gold) have surged +200% in 2023
- Maiden drilling hits significant massive sulphides at Kuniko’s Ertelien nickel-copper-cobalt deposit in Norway
- Up on no news: Buxton Resources, Haranga Resources
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Monday February 6.
KUNIKO (ASX:KNI)
KNI’s says its historic Ertelien nickel-copper-cobalt deposit in Norway is “highly prospective for further development” after maiden drilling hit significant massive sulphides (the highest-grade stuff).
The hole, the first of five at Ertelien, was completed to a depth of ~470m and was designed as a ‘twin hole’ of old drilling.
This historic hole returned 28.1m @ 1.34% nickel, 1.19% copper, 0.07% cobalt and 0.14g/t gold from 280.5m.
KNI will update the market when assay results become available.
“We are delighted that our maiden drill hole at Ertelien has delivered a great result, returning several intersections of observable massive sulphides,” KNI CEO Antony Beckmand says.
“This, combined with the high-grade assay results from the historic drill core demonstrates this project and the Ringerike area is, as expected, highly prospective for further development.
“The presence of multiple battery mineral elements identified at this project, is a strong signal of future economic potential, encouraging us to aggressively pursue our target of defining a maiden JORC resource at this site.
“The Ertelien nickel project, like our Skuterud cobalt project, is close to Oslo with readily available infrastructure including hydroelectric based power.”
KNI says a new, two-rig drilling program at Skuterud – designed to follow up on a successful maiden program last year — is “imminent”.
Drilling at the Undal-Nyberget copper project, also in Norway, will start in March.
One of the hottest IPOs of 2021, Vulcan Energy (ASX:VUL) spinout KNI gained 325% on its first day, before briefly peaking at a remarkable $3 per share shortly thereafter.
The $30m capped stock is up 10% in 2023. It had ~$6.7m in the bank at the end of December.
BUXTON RESOURCES (ASX:BUX)
(Up on no news)
In 2022, the explorer refocused on the wholly owned Yalbra graphite project in WA, which was shunted to the basement of its portfolio ~7 years prior.
Before it was mothballed BUX defined a 4.0Mt @ 16.2% TGC resource (last updated in 2014), making it “Australia’s highest grade graphite resource”, according to the company.
The company reckons this outcropping orebody is perfect for making spherical graphite for the burgeoning battery sector.
“The combination of improving market conditions, promising results from metallurgical work (ongoing) and project terrain which is highly amenable to siting a mining operation, Yalbra is well positioned for subsequent advancement through feasibility studies and permitting,” BUX said May last year.
The company is planning an EM survey and drilling to upgrade and expand the existing resource in 2023.
BUX is also free-carried on three other assets – Copper Wolf, Narryer and West Kimberley – which are subject to farm in deals with miner and major shareholder (19.9%) IGO (ASX:IGO).
The $27m capped stock is up 65% in 2023, reaching its highest point since mid-2018 in early trade.
It had $3.1m in the bank at the end of December.
TRUSCOTT MINING (ASX:TRM)
(Up on no news)
The dusty rock doctor jargon runs deep in a TRM quarterly report, but the important thing is this: a drilling program at the high-grade Westminster gold project in the NT kicked off December to test mineralisation at depth, and things are looking pretty promising.
Drill results are pending.
A couple of deposits at Westminster were lightly mined by old timers, but before TRM came along no exploration had been conducted since the 1960s.
The tightly held $21m capped stock is having a belter so far in 2023, up 220% on higher-than-normal volumes.
LODE RESOURCES (ASX:LDR)
LDR has ridden recent drilling success into a $4.4m placement at 30c per share: a reasonable 10.45% discount to the last traded price and a 3.4% premium to the 15-day volume-weighted average price.
Funds will be used advance drilling programs at the Webbs Consol silver and Uralla gold projects, the company says.
LDR is now +230% since announcing an incredible 116.1m at 1003g/t silver equivalent hit from 90m — including 3.1m at 3325g/t silver from 201m – at the historic Webbs Consol project in NSW on February 1.
That’s not true width but still very thick, very high grade, and not too deep; three basic criteria punters should look at when evaluating drill results.
This hit from the so-called Tangoa West lode – one of six at the project — represents the highest endowment of all drill intercepts received to date, the company says.
It also doubles Tangoa West mineralisation to a depth of 200m vertically “and the lode width appears to increase with depth”.
Multiple follow-up drill holes have been designed to test Tangoa West up to a depth of 450m vertically, in addition to depth testing other lodes discovered by earlier drilling.
This drilling will kick off “imminently”.
The tightly held $20m capped stock listed mid-2021 with three main projects in the underexplored New England Fold Belt of NSW, north of the better-known Lachlan Fold.
Webb Consol is now the clear focus, with 97% of spending in the December half funnelled towards the project.
HARANGA RESOURCES (ASX:HAR)
(Up on no news)
HAR – included in our ‘dirt cheap ASX uranium stocks with upside’ yarn – listed on the ASX January 2022 with a bunch of uranium and gold projects in West Africa.
A +3,000m, 22-hole maiden drilling program at the Saraya uranium project was completed in December, with assays pending.
Early-stage analysis indicates uranium was intersected in all holes, the company says.
HAR inherited 61,500m of historical drilling at Saraya, which allowed it to release an exploration target of 5-20 million tonnes grading between 350 to 750 ppm eU3O8 for 4-35 Mlb contained eU3O8.
Following receipt of all drill results, HAR will aim to convert the exploration target to a maiden mineral resource by early Q2 (~April 2023).
$10m capped HAR is up 90% year to date. It had ~$2.3m in the bank at the end of December.
