Exploration success can be an elusive thing, but Garimpeiro reckons if success has been tasted previously, it is more likely it will be tasted again.
On that basis he went looking this week for small cap explorers that haven’t tasted success, but which now have new leaders who have enjoyed success in a major way previously.
He came up with two names – Boadicea Resources (ASX:BOA) and SIPA Resources (ASX:SRI).
Time will tell if the previous success of the new leaders will rub off on their new ASX vehicles. But having the benefit of the IP accumulated previously on what it takes has got to give them an edge.
BOADICEA RESOURCES (ASX:BOA)
This one was trading at 2.3c mid-week for a market cap of $2.83 million, which is not much more than its cash backing.
But it is not sitting on the cash. Boadicea is active in Western Australia with the drill rig at various lithium and base/precious metals projects.
Well known Melbourne geophysicist Cath Norman came on board as chair and managing director last year and has been fine-tuning the company’s exploration portfolio to achieve more bang for its bucks.
Garimpeiro is not exaggerating when he says Norman is well known. She should be as in a former life as boss of the oil junior FAR Ltd (ASX:FAR) she took the company to frontier oil fairways offshore from Senegal, West Africa.
It was a fabulous success with as much as 5 billion barrels of oil-in-place discovered since, starting with the initial discovery by FAR in 2014. FAR, nor Norman, were there to celebrate first oil production a couple of weeks ago from the initial development.
That’s because ownership now rests with Woodside. There is a long story about how FAR was squeezed out of the oil bonanza but today’s interest is in the fact the initial discoveries led by Norman make her one of Australia’s most successful explorers.
Garimpeiro is not going to suggest Norman is on for a repeat performance in mineral exploration with Boadicea. But as suggested earlier, having tasted big-time success there is generally a hunger for more in the resources game.
What can be said for certain is that Norman has started out at Boadicea on the ground floor, just as she did when she became FAR boss in 2011.
Already, Norman has been busy rolling out four drill programs across lithium and base/precious metals. The first – Two Tanks lithium to the west of Mt Ida – has been completed with some encouraging results.
The full program makes for a busy back half of 2024. More detail on the program is on the company’s website. Garimpeiro’s personal favourite is the Snowy’s prospect in the Fraser Range.
It is a big and shallow EM anomaly prospective for nickel, zinc, copper and cobalt mineralisation. It is 100% owned and is in addition to the company’s other Fraser Range projects in joint ventures with IGO.
SIPA RESOURCES (ASX:SRI)
A stalwart of the mineral exploration scene, Sipa was trading mid-week at 1.3c for a market cap of $2.96m.
And like FAR, the company has a relatively new managing director, Andrew Muir, who has been fine-tuning things to give Sipa a shot at making a game-changing discovery.
Muir is a geologist with his fingerprints on the discovery of the multi-million ounce Wallaby gold deposit in WA, now owned by South African giant Gold Fields. He is best known in more recent times for his stint as a mining research analyst and his MD role at NTM Gold.
NTM was a $15m company in 2018 on the strength of its Redcliffe gold project to the north-east of Laverton in WA. Under Muir the gold resource grew strongly, leading to NTM being taken over by Dacian (now part of Genesis Minerals (ASX:GMD)) for $95m in 2020.
Sipa has a portfolio of potentially high impact exploration projects for Muir to work with. Hopefully his success at NTM will rub-off on Sipa, which deserves its time in the sun after all these years of being an honest toiler.
A recent presentation on the website gives a rundown on the portfolio but it is Skeleton Rocks near Southern Cross and the Paterson North project near Rio Tinto’s Winu gold-copper project that has got Garimpeiro’s interest up, in addition to Muir’s smarts in how to make a junior explorer a success.
The views, information, or opinions expressed in the interviews in this article are solely those of the interviewees and do not represent the views of Stockhead. Stockhead does not provide, endorse or otherwise assume responsibility for any financial product advice contained in this article.
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