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Mining
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners, Thursday March 9.
The nickel explorer hit 1.81m at 23.1% nickel during diamond drilling at the GSP prospect (GSP) within its Ringlock Dam nickel project in WA.
The company also flagged strong supporting intercepts in other drillholes including 2.2m a t2.27% nickel and and zones of disseminated nickel sulphides.
CEO and MD Nick Castleden says the results validate the prospect as a “live high-tenor nickel sulphide system”.
“The exploration prize is an intact high-grade footwall massive sulphide body somewhere nearby,” he said.
“We know this ultramafic package can deliver, as evidenced by the historic high-grade Silver Swan deposit located some 30km to the southeast.”
The broader Project area covers more than 10km of soil-covered strike of highly prospective Silver Swan-Black Swan ultramafic belt, and hosts additional targets beyond GSP, including around open disseminated sulphide intercepts at the Ringlock prospect.
These targets will also be worked up and ranked in coming months.
Varsican has nabbed a new cornerstone investor in a recent A$1.85 million capital raise at $0.018 per share in Zinc GroupCo (ZincCo), who have “significant experience developing global resource projects,” MD and CEO Steward Dickson says.
ZincCo have subscribed for A$1.3 million and may provide funding of up to A$2.3 million through the exercise of attaching options at $0.0275 per share.
“ZincCo has experience in investing and supporting companies that are pursuing drill ready, highly qualified zinc exploration assets and / or near-term production opportunities,” Dickson added.
“The San Jose Mine and wider Novales-Udias Project clearly fits ZincCo’s focus areas.
“ZincCo brings a capability in commodities trading and marketing and development that will assist us as we advance key workstreams to consider our mine re-start options in due course.”
The company plans to use the funds raised to complete the planned concept study that will asses the re-start potential of the Spanish mine.
After spending the last few years advancing its Eastern Goldfields gold projects, the explorer is now shifting focus to the Gascoyne Region, where it holds projects which are prospective for a range of commodities including iron oxide copper-gold (IOCG), REE’s hosted in carbonatites, and nickel-copper-PGE’s.
“We have a number of fantastic discovery opportunities right across our project portfolio but the Gascoyne region has really heated up over the last 12-18 months,” executive chairman Allan Kelly said.
“Now that we have completed regional-scale targeting on our granted projects, we are looking forward to focussing in on our more advanced targets this year.
“We’re excited about the potential at Whaleshark and/or Bangemall with a new IOCG, REE or nickel-copper-PGE discovery a real possibility at these project sites.”
Modelling of gravity data at the Whaleshark project has outlined a high priority bedrock IOCG target, and diamond drilling will commence once a heritage survey has been completed over the proposed drill sites.
At the Dooley Downs and Mount Vernon targets within the Bangemall project, the plan is to conduct geochemical sampling.
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PKO is exploring for platinum group metals (PGMs) at the Eastman project, along strike (~50km) from Future Metals’ (ASX:FME) big 6.9Moz PGE resource in the Kimberley region of WA.
Late 2022 drilling returned decent results from the Brumby prospect in February, including 30m @ 1.45g/t PdEq1 (1.0g/t 3E2 ) from 48m.
High-grade PGEs at Brumby are now defined over 180m strike extent that is open in both directions with a 1.4km strike potential, PKO says.
Promising results were also returned from the Gap and Louisa prospects.
“The intercepts at the Brumby prospect are particularly encouraging, indicating a higher-grade ore shoot that we plan to evaluate as soon as feasible, as well as testing of other high-grade target areas across the intrusion system,” PKO exec Rae Clark said in February.
“These results provide us with a clear path forward for Peako’s exploration in 2023 and, in conjunction with the WA Government’s EIS grant for diamond drilling at Brumby, enable a clear plan for our next phase of exploration to test the extent of PGE mineralisation at Brumby and to move forward toward resource definition drilling, thereby further unlocking the potential of our Eastman project.”
PKO is currently planning its 2023 exploration program, which will kick off following conclusion of the Kimberley wet season (usually between Oct-May).
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Labour issues, tussles with contractors, and delays to plant commissioning forced DTR to suspend operations at its Gold Links gold mine late 2022, following a short-lived production run.
The company began looking for partnerships or joint ventures “to secure the future operations of Gold Links, without Dateline Resources having to make any further capital contribution”.
DTR now has a partner which will allow production to restart. The deal combines DTR’s Gold Links mine and Lucky Strike processing plant with US company MW Sorter’s 51,000oz stockpiles at the London and Hock Hocking mines, ~160km from the plant.
The new entity will be owned 50% by DTR, 40% by MW and 10% by a private Aussie investor.
As part of the deal, MW and the Australian investor have injected US$440,000 into Dateline subsidiary and arranged a new US$5 million working capital facility.
The initial plan is to toll treat the stockpiles through the plant, with DTR to be paid US$825,000 per month as a treatment fee. MW will also pay to upgrade the plant.
Longer term, the JV will assess the opportunity to recommence underground mining at Gold Links, with ore to be blended with London stockpiles to ensure that the plant can consistently operate at 250 tonnes per day.
If the transaction is successfully concluded, first ore is expected to be transported to Lucky Strike by June 2023.
DTR also owns the 813,000oz Colosseum gold-rare earths project in California, which will be a major exploration focus in 2023.
344,000oz was produced from Colosseum between 1988-1993 before mining ceased due to a low gold price environment.
Colosseum is also less than 10km from the Mountain rare earths mine. Last year DTR uncovered multiple REE drill targets including a 2km-long monster about 1km from the Colosseum open pit.
In Feb, the company received approval from San Bernardino County to officially certify pre-existing vested rights to access and extract mineral resources at Colosseum mine – with the County expected to issue the Certificate of Land Use Compliance (CLUC) shortly.
“We are finalising our gold and rare earth drilling plans and hope to be back on the ground in the near future,” MD Stephen Baghdadi said.
This month the company announced a $2.71m cap raising at $0.02 per share to fund exploration at the project.
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