Vic gold is back on the menu boys. Pic: Getty Images
Resources Top 5: Victorian gold rush back in focus with Bubalus deal
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- The Victorian gold rush is coming back to life with junior Bubalus Resources picking up new ground adjacent to the high-grade Fosterville and Costerfield mines
- Black Dragon Gold rebounds after permitting disappointment in Spain
- Caprice sights visible gold in the Murchison
Your standout small cap resources stocks for Tuesday, December 3.
BUBALUS RESOURCES (ASX:BUS)
Victorian gold fever, relaunched almost a decade ago with the discovery of the legendary Swan Zone at the Fosterville gold mine, is back again with Bubalus Resources announcing an option to acquire a portfolio of Victorian exploration licences covering around 1000km2 near Fosterville and Costerfield.
Owned by international miners Agnico Eagle and Mandalay Resources, respectively, Fosterville and Costerfield count as two of a handful of Victorian gold mines still in operation and among the highest-grade gold operations in Oz, with the latter also Australia’s only active producer of roaring critical metal antimony.
Nearby the optioned Crosbie and Murrdindi licences is also the Sunday Creek discovery, a gold find by Southern Cross Gold (ASX:SXG) which has turned the one-time micro-cap float into a $580 million pre-resource gold and antimony explorer.
Significantly, the vendor has already completed permitting for low-impact exploration at Crosbie, enabling it to carry out drilling from existing tracks, with agreements also reached with the native title party responsible for the Taungurung land use activity agreement and a private landowner whose property will be used for drilling.
Historic surface sampling at Crosbie South has picked up grades of up to 19.1g/t gold and 1.1% antimony from the Prince Foote trend.
Bubalus has raised $900,000 at 11c per share to fund acquisition costs for the purchase from Syndicate Minerals, exploration and working capital.
Syndicate will receive $100,000 for the option grant and 2.29 million fully paid ordinary shares in Bubalus, with the option exercise to cost $100,000 if it is done within six months of execution sliding up to as much as $900,000 within 48 months.
Syndicate will also claim 2.29m shares and 2.29m options, half exercisable at 22c and half to be exercised at 33c along with a 1.5% net smelter returns royalty should the option be taken up.
BLACK DRAGON GOLD (ASX:BDG)
(Up on no news)
Black Dragon is in recovery mode after the undeniably bad news on Monday that permitting for its Salave gold project in northern Spain had again been delayed.
The Tapia de Casariego Town Council elected to vote against BDG’s application to rezone land at a council session held in public but without a public vote on November 29, the company said.
BDG says it’s taken nine months for the Tapia Council to consider an application it ‘formally accepted’ in February. The explorer’s position is that it’s not aware of restrictions to rezoning in the 2016 Urbanistic Plan that would prevent a change in land use from agricultural to industrial.
“This is a highly frustrating further delay to the Salave Gold Project and the essential revitalisation of a declining local economy. There are no environmental grounds to reject this application, every concern identified in 2019 has been resolved and the Project’s environmental impact assessment is finalised,” exec chair Dominic Roberts said on Monday.
“Further, we are unaware of any restrictive conditions in the 2016 Urbanistic Plan, the very same plan under which the Council approved the most recent drilling programme, but note the implication that this is an administrative and not emotional rejection of the application.”
The BDG share price nosedived from 3.2c on Friday to 1.9c at the close on Tuesday, before rebounding to 2.5c today.
EUROPEAN LITHIUM (ASX:EUR)
(Up on no news)
Up 107% in the past five trading days, Tony Sage’s EUR is still moving up on the announcement of an environmental permitting milestone at the Wolfsberg lithium project in Austria.
The site is owned by EUR’s Nasdaq listed subsidiary Critical Metals Corp (NASDAQ:CRML),in which it currently holds a 74.3% stake.
The company is aiming to deliver Europe’s first domestic spodumene mine underground at Wolfsberg, a project which lies around 270km from Vienna.
Europe remains virtually entirely reliant on supply from China for its EV industry, having spent years moving raw materials supply offshore.
EUR announced no environmental impact assessment would be required by the Carinthian state government since its above ground facilities will take up less than 10 hectares. The project is slated to be a local supplier of lithium chemicals to auto-giant BMW.
The sharp run-up in EUR’s share price in recent days prompted a speeding ticket from the ASX, with the $63m-capped company saying there was no information to disclose to the market that hasn’t already been released and that it remains compliant with the ASX listing rules.
CAPRICE RESOURCES (ASX:CRS)
Caprice is looking for gold in the 15Moz Murchison province, where it thinks it has a target with a similar look to the gold deposits mined by Westgold Resources (ASX:WGX) around Cue.
WGX’s Cuddingwarra deposits are just 2km east of Caprice’s project of the same name, where it’s looking for gold around historical quartz reefs also known to host Murchison mines like Ramelius Resources’ (ASX:RMS) Hill 50.
Getting the speccy investor’s attention today is some visible gold found in quartz veins in the CUD-GPX01 target outcrop, with this hilariously gaudy example to boot.
Nice. Of course visual mineralisation is no indicator of what’s in the ground. But it does enliven the imagination. Cuddingwarra is, of course, “remarkably underexplored”.
“With the Australian dollar gold price above A$4,000 an ounce, it makes rich pickings for anyone with high-grade gold deposits and Caprice has an exciting portfolio of gold projects within the prolific Murchison region,” Caprice CEO Luke Cox said.
“Our Cuddingwarra Gold Project is remarkably underexplored, as it has been dismissed by previous explorers who thought it was concealed beneath a blanket calcrete cover.
“Our field observations have confirmed that this is, in fact, not the case, with the location of outcrop including quartz reefs with visible gold by the Caprice team far exceeding our expectations and highlighting Cuddingwarra’s potential to deliver significant gold discoveries.
“Initial exploration at Cuddingwarra complements the company’s growth and resource definition drilling programme at our Island Gold Project and New Orient Gold Mine, as we advance to identifying a potential development opportunity.”
MTM CRITICAL METALS (ASX:MTM)
(Up on no news)
Another one up on no news, the process tech innovator has found itself up 50% this month.
Previously an explorer, MTM is now a proponent of a new form of processing called flash joule heating.
Last week it announced a strategic partnership to produce critical metals indium, gallium and germanium, heavily controlled by China and Russia, from scrap with US based Indium Corporation.
Using a planned demo plant in Houston, where design is expected to completed by February, MTM is planning to test the tech on larger scale for processing gallium, e-waste, lithium and other critical metals such as rare earths, niobium and antimony concentrate, red mud and lithium ion black mass.
At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Bubalus Resources, European Lithium and MTM Critical Metals are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.
