Resources Top 5: Who's cracked a top 10 greatest (gold) hits list today?

Greenstone hits 7m at 57g/t at its Burbanks gold mine near Coolgardie
Chase Mining up on battery graphite testwork at McIntosh
Codrus, Redcastle, Reedy Lagoon among juniors rising on no news

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Thursday, December 1.

Greenstone Resources (ASX:GSR)

Spotify Wrapped stories are out today, consuming the type of people who extract validation from knowing they’re among the top 3% of Drake fans in the world, truly an achievement.

It is largely meaningless. You’re not a classical music fan because an unplanned viewing of Apocalypse Now gave way to a psychopathic urge to binge Ride of the Valkyries for days on end back in March.

Nevertheless, we love them and the time for the year-end list is nigh, a Goldilocks period for editors who hope they can wedge their medium into the awards season dialogue.

For those who want to see themselves on a year-end list, the greatest of all forms of recognition, there isn’t much time to create something of substance. But gold and battery metals explorer Greenstone Resources (ASX:GSR) may well (by George) have got it.

Shares in the junior leapt this morning after it announced a hit of 7m at 57.84g/t from just 90m at the Burbanks gold mine near Coolgardie, including 1m at 375g/t.

7m at almost two ounces to the tonne is the sort of thing you don’t normally see in this day and age, so investors will stand up and take notice even at this late stage of the game.

Other hits include 3m at 4.18g/t from 17m and 2m at 5.88g/t from 38m, in a 10,000m drill program supporting the examination of GSR’s 215,000-330,000oz Burbanks exploration target. That is outside of an existing resource of 3.4Mt at 2.5g/t gold for 277,547oz.

MD Chris Hanson says the strike will place Burbanks in the top 10 drill intercepts for pre-development projects in WA this year.

“We are highly encouraged by the first results from the Phase 1 drill campaign at Burbanks, having returned multiple high-grade intercepts in the first holes drilled which are in line with the historical underground production grades from the Burbanks Gold Project of 324,000oz @ 22.7g/t Au,” he said.

“Importantly these most recent intercepts serve to highlight the potential to significantly increase the resource base at Burbanks over the coming months through the completion of the 10,000 metre Phase 1 drill campaign which is targeting the unclassified mineralisation supporting the Exploration Target.

“Following the completion of the Phase-1 drill campaign in March 2023, we look forward to testing the broader strike and depth extensions at Burbanks, which remain open in all directions and are not included in the existing Resource or Exploration Target.”

Greenstone Resources (ASX:GSR) share price today:

Reedy Lagoon Corporation (ASX:RLC)

(Up on no news)

Up 18% this morning without a whisper of an announcement is Reedy Lagoon, which is casting its net pretty wide with interests in lithium, iron ore and gold.

The $8 million minnow unsurprisingly is diving into the green metal trend.

It wants to produce “green high purity pig iron” at its Burracoppin magnetite project in WA’s south where it wants to produce not bog standard iron ore, but a “mining, biomassing, smelting operation” to be a “low cost producer of green high purity pig iron” for low emissions electric arc furnaces.

One of its big focuses in recent times has been its Nevada lithium assets in the States, where it has spent the past year staking additional claims to secure extensions over targets beyond the boundaries of its Alkali Lake North project, proximal to the Silver Peak Lithium Operation and Tesla’s Reno gigafactory.

“The elevated demand for lithium is not likely to be short term. The battery factories that have been and are still being constructed for the battery electric vehicle factories all need lithium,” managing director Geof Fethers told shareholders at RLC’s AGM last week.

“The transition to BEVs has only just begun. Long-term demand for lithium provides an exciting opportunity for Reedy Lagoon’s shareholders given the location of our lithium brine projects in North America. Large battery plants (such as Tesla) require a stable local supply of feedstocks.

“Lithium is listed by the USA as a ‘critical metal’ for good reason. Large parts of the world are moving to exclude the use of cars that burn fossil fuels. Lithium is a critical part of that transition.”

Reedy Lagoon Corporation (ASX:RLC) share price today:

Chase Mining Corporation (ASX:CML)

Chase Mining Corporation recently completed the acquisition of Green Critical Minerals, which holds the right to acquire up to 80% of the graphite rights to the McIntosh project.

It is the third largest ASX listed graphite project in Australia, a sector where juniors are eager to get a foot in the door in the hope it becomes the next lithium.

McIntosh currently boasts a resource of 23.8Mt at 4.5% total graphitic content, but an 8km long target called Threadfin is undergoing re-evaluation for its potential to host graphite suitable for the Spherical Purified Graphite market.

Preliminary anode testing at McIntosh has passed early parameters for the battery industry, GCM says, with testing also planned on the Threadfin flake.

Threadfin boasts an exploration target of 25-50Mt at 3-5% TGC, on top of a separate conceptual exploration target of 50-100Mt at 2-5% TGC. Previous owner Hexagon Energy Materials removed the target previously due to factors like fine flake size.

But GCM is revisiting the target because it thinks it has potential to produce a suitable product for the EV market.

Chase Mining (ASX:CML) share price today:

Codrus Minerals (ASX:CDR)

(Up on no news)

Mooning for no apparent reason is Codrus Minerals, up 14% as of the time of writing.

Investors may be chirpy still about a deal announced last week to earn up to 90% of the Karloning rare earth element project in WA’s Wheatbelt, 260km northeast of Perth.

That project boasts a large 1.5km long and 200m wide pegmatite and has been shown to host niobium alongside magnet REEs like dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, and praseodymium.

The key phrase in that announcement last week is probably the phrase “niobium rich”.

Popularised by WA1 Resources’ (ASX:WA1) recent discovery on the WA/NT border, niobium is mainly used to make steel better, but also has growing uses in lithium-ion batteries, intelligent glass, solar panels, 5G tech, and nuclear energy.

Ferroniobium metal (65% Nb) sells for ~US$45,000/t.

Codrus Minerals (ASX:CDR) share price today:

Redcastle Resources (ASX:RC1)

(Up on no news)

Redcastle is one of a number of juniors flittering about the Leonora gold scene, where some major consolidation action has been bubbling about in the background for most of the year.

Redcastle is unlikely to feature in that merry go round any time soon, but remains drilling for a gold discovery to try put it on the radar.

Its sporadically explored Redcastle project lies 62km east-southeast of Leo and 25km due south of Glencore’s Murrin Murrin nickel mine.

Most of the holes at Redcastle have been drilled to less than 50m, raising the prospects of a discovery in underexplored ground deep on tenements largely held by prospectors for several years.

Recent step out RC drilling included a hit of 2m at 7.79g/t from 115m, following on from shallow results in the middle of the year which included at least one impressive intercept of 10m at 29.16g/t from 6m and 1m at 250g/t.