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Resources Top 5: This recently listed nickel stock wants to be ‘production ready’ in 2023
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- Blaze has ground next door to mammoth ‘Earaheedy’ lead-zinc discovery
- High grade explorer Akora gains after iron ore pushes through $US140/t
- Recently listed Widgie Nickel wants to be ‘production ready’ by end of 2023
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Tuesday February 1.
WIDGIE NICKEL (ASX:WIN)
(Up on no news)
The recently listed Neometals (ASX:NMT) spin off wants to be a ‘production ready’ nickel stock by end of 2023.
Its main game is the ‘Mt Edwards’ project in WA, where 162,600t of nickel across 11 separate resources has already been identified.
Mt Edwards also has lithium potential.
Over 10,400m of RC drilling for 69 holes has been completed since November 11, with first results due in the current quarter.
34 pre-collared holes established through this initial drilling program are now being lengthened by diamond drilling designed to intersect nickel mineralisation.
“This is where the excitement begins,” managing director Steve Norregaard said Jan 20.
“We’ve been eagerly anticipating the commencement of the diamond drilling, which marks a major step in enabling us to expand our mineral nickel resource at Mt Edwards and add significant value upside potential for our shareholders.
“We are looking forward to continuing the strong momentum we’ve generated at the early stages of our maiden drilling campaign.”
WIN – which raised $24m when it listed on the ASX last year — is up 70% on its IPO price of 20c per share.
BLAZE MINERALS (ASX:BLZ)
This nearologist went on a nice little run last year after acquiring ground next to the mammoth Rumble Resources (ASX:RTR) — Zenith Minerals (ASX:ZNC) lead-zinc discovery at ‘Earaheedy’ in WA.
The BLZ share price spiked, but soon ran out of puff and settled back to the long-term average.
Yesterday, RTR announced more thick, shallow, and high-grade mineralisation at Earaheedy, which could have influenced BLZ’s share price action today. Did we mention they are right next door?
BLZ recently kicked off early-stage field work to map and identify the prospective contact between the Yelma and Frere formation — the focus of known base metal mineralisation in the Earaheedy Basin.
BLZ is also drilling two anomalies at its Jimberlana nickel-copper-PGE project, also in WA. The RC drilling program will comprise ~8 RC holes for a total of 1200m of drilling and is expected to be completed by the end of January 2022.
The $12m market cap stock is up 80% year-to-date. It had $2.1m in the bank at the end of December.
FELIX GOLD (ASX:FXG)
This gold explorer listed on the ASX yesterday.
FXG is hunting gold deposits in the Fairbanks District in Alaska, home to multimillion ounce monsters like Kinross’s ‘Fort Knox’ and Freegold’s ‘Golden Summit’.
In March, a 180-hole drilling program (5000m to 8000m) will start at the ‘Treasure Creek’ project, focussed on testing large-scale, high-grade anomalies at multiple prospects.
Following the program at Treasure Creek, drilling will shift to defined targets at the NE Fairbanks, Grant-Ester and Liberty Bell projects.
Overall, FXG plans to drill between 10,000m and 15,000m across its Fairbanks tenure through 2022.
“Our value proposition is simple – high prospectivity tenure in the world-class Fairbanks District of the Tintina Gold Province, strong cash backing post-IPO and aggressive forthcoming drilling plans,” FXG managing director and CEO Dr Kylie Prendergast says.
“We are seeking to discover Tier 1 gold deposits with the planned drilling program set to test our initial high-conviction targets across Fairbanks through until the December quarter.”
AKORA RESOURCES (ASX:AKO)
(Up on no news)
Iron ore is back with a bang in 2022, with prices for benchmark 62% fe now pushing through $US140/t.
The outlook is also good, especially for the higher grade iron ore companies, with the expectation that green steelmaking technologies in the future will favour higher grade ores and concentrates.
AKO says its ‘Bekisopa’ project in Madagascar is shaping up “as one of the highest-grade iron ore projects in the world”.
The 60.1% iron at surface across the ‘Central Zone’ could be sold as cheaper-to-produce direct shipping ore (DSO). The resource can then be upgraded to 66.1% after magnetic separation at 2mm crush size, and to 70.2% iron at 75-micron size.
That’s well above the industry benchmark of 62%.
The Central Zone is a large, near surface, high-grade area 1.8km long, ~300m wide, and with 50m to 70m average thickness – “a good formation for open pit, low stripping ration mining”, AKO says.
There’s also potential for mineralisation to continue 1.3kms to the south “which suggests potential in this Central Zone for a significant iron resource”.
The $13m market cap stock is up 50% year to date.
It had just $1m in the bank at the end of December, which means some sort of cap raise could be coming soon.
KULA GOLD (ASX:KGD)
(Up on no news)
KGD is mostly a kaolin explorer, with some gold on the side.
You might know it as the white clay used to seal dams, but kaolin is used in everything — paper, rubber, paint, ceramics, fibreglass, cosmetics, high purity alumina (HPA) and pharmaceuticals are some notable examples.
About 5kg of kaolin also used in the manufacture of each car.
A drilling program is currently underway at ‘Boomerang’, part of KGD’s ‘Marvel Loch-Airfield’ project in WA. As of December 31, 52 RC holes had been drilled out of the estimated 80-hole planned program.
This should culminate in a maiden resource.
To test the gold potential at Boomerang, drill holes are being extended below the kaolin horizon into either saprock or fresh rock.
$8.6m market cap KGD is down 16% year-to-date. It had ~$2.1m in the bank at the end of December.
