Resources Top 5: Vulcan Energy spin-off Kuniko nears $1 per share

Kuniko kicks off soil sampling at Skuterud cobalt and Vangrøfta copper projects in Norway
American Rare Earths picking up “consistently high grade” rare earths from the Halleck Creek project
Native Mineral Resources (base metals, gold), Fe Limited (iron ore) and Australasian Gold (gold, lithium) up on no news

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Thursday August 26.

KUNIKO (ASX:KNI)

The ‘zero carbon’ Vulcan Energy (ASX:VUL) spin-off stormed onto the ASX boards on Tuesday, with the share price closing the first day a remarkable 325% above its 20c IPO offer price.

After a short breather yesterday, the Scandinavian base metals explorer is once again pushing toward $1 per share.

Remarkable stuff.

The stock has now kicked off early stage soil sampling at the Skuterud cobalt and Vangrøfta copper projects in Norway.

The Skuterud mine produced over one million tonnes of cobalt between 1773-1898, and at the time was both the world’s largest cobalt producer and the largest company in Norway.

The Vangrøfta licence hosts the historical Fredrick IV mine, from which 30 years of small-scale production occurred up until 1908.

More recent rock chip samples reported results up to 16.75% copper, 3.33 g/t gold and 0.216% cobalt from historical mine workings and dumps at the project.

First new assay data is expected in September 2021, the company says.

AMERICAN RARE EARTHS (ASX:ARR)

The popular rare earths explorer is picking up “consistently high grade” Total Rare Earth Oxides (TREO) from the ‘Halleck Creek’ project area in Wyoming.

Highest grades from surface samples collected in 2021 included 5,756ppm (0.5756%) TREO, 552ppm (0.0552%) Heavy Rare Earths (HREO) and 1,433 (0.1433%) Magnet Minerals Oxide.

The magnet rare earths, NdPr, comprises 22% of TREO at an “ideal” 4:1 ratio, ARR says.

To put that in very loose context, miner Lynas Resources (ASX:LYC) recently hit 149m of 2.2% REO in drilling at the world class Mt Weld deposit in WA.

ARR is proposing to drill five holes in the northern area of ‘Overton Mountain’, and additional exploration holes in the southern ‘Red Mountain’ area.

Last week, the stock announced a 216% increase in TREO grade during preliminary test work at the flagship ‘La Paz’ project in Arizona.

This followed a 117% increase in indicated resources.

The $67m market cap stock is now up 52% over the past week, 156% over the past month, and 850% since fully pivoting to rare earths in June last year.

NATIVE MINERAL RESOURCES (ASX:NMR)

(Up on no news)

The explorer plans to accelerate work at the ‘Music Well’ gold project over the coming months including diamond drilling, further bulk sampling and airborne geophysical survey – starting with a 450m diamond drilling campaign which was due to kick off last month.

At the ‘Palmerville’ copper project in QLD exploration plans were being finalised.

“Our team completed a program of rock chip sampling during the [June] quarter which returned some fantastic high-grade copper hits across new and existing target areas, so we are very eager to roll out our next phase of exploration this quarter,” managing director Blake Cannavo says.

NMR also picked up ground prospective for nickel-copper-PGEs in the Nullarbor region of WA – a super interesting area almost completely untouched by exploration.

FE LIMITED (ASX:FEL)

(Up on no news)

Fe — which plummeted alongside the iron ore price — has pared some losses as the steel-making ingredient recovers towards $US150/t.

The small cap says the first shipment of ore from the ‘JWD’ project is now expected in September.

With iron ore prices becoming volatile in recent weeks, “it was comforting to lock down attractive pricing on the company’s first three shipments”, boss Tony Sage says.

First stage development consists of a test pit from which Fe has the right to extract up to 300,000t of ore.

From here, the company has the option to pay $4.25m to move to the second stage, which allows a further 2.7Mt of ore to be extracted.

AUSTRALASIAN GOLD (ASX:A8G)

(Up on no news)

Earlier this week, Australasian Gold lodged a tenement application in the Mt Peake lithium pegmatite district in Northern Territory.

The ground, which covers ~640sqkm and shares a boundary with Core Lithium’s (ASX:CXO) ‘Anningie’ lithium project, will be the focus on an upcoming field mapping campaign.

“There is great demand for spodumene concentrate and there are currently limited producers in the pipeline,” Australasian Gold managing director Dr Qingtao Zeng says.

“That is where we see the opportunities.

“In the lithium 1.0 boom, we saw new discoveries like Pilgangoora, Mt Holland and Finniss lithium projects.

“Now we are in the era of Lithium 2.0; it is most likely that more discoveries will be made through exploration works in recognised pegmatite districts.”

The $6m market cap stock is up ~26% over the past week.