FMR Resources has used Appleflow as a vehicle to get itself into the ASX shop window
The newly-minted explorer has copper and REE projects in Canada
$2.7m raised at 20c per share
A new Aussie junior is joining a growing trend of ASX explorers hunting copper in Canada, with FMR Resources (ASX:FMR) backdoor listing through the husk of software company Appleflow, raising $2.7m to refloat on the bourse.
It’s been tough this year and last to get an IPO to the market, while juniors are also finding capital raising tougher, but sometimes the most valuable asset a company has is its ASX listing.
Such is the way with the new copper explorer, which reversed its way to begin trading yesterday.
The latest Aussie mining junior will get to work proving up its Fairfield and Fintry critical minerals projects within the Appalachian gold-copper belt in New Brunswick.
It’s all very early stage, nearology coded stuff, with FMR leveraging its proximity to a host of Canadian copper and rare earths discoveries and historic mines as its calling card.
The exploration projects were acquired in the purchase of a private vehicle called Canada Future Metals, with Bill Oliver taking on a non-executive director role in the relisting and existing NED John Winter to resign.
The re-rate is a 30:1 consolidation, with FMR closing at an even 20c after an uneventful first day of trade on Wednesday.
Total securities at re-listing are comprised of 23,415,226 shares, 3,124,875 options and 1m performance shares.
New critical minerals projects
FMR claims Fairfield boasts geology that bears similarities to that of American West Metals’ (ASX:AW1) Storm project in Nunavut, a Canadian province nearby.
Storm was shown to have a maiden resource of 17.5Mt at 1.2% copper and 3.4g/t silver in January this year, inclusing over 200,000t of copper metal.
FireFly Metals (ASX:FFM) and its 39.2Mt Green Bay project also sit on the same mineralisation belt as Fairfield. Formerly known as AuTECO Minerals, the appointment of former Bellevue Gold (ASX:BGL) boss Steve Parsons as MD, rising copper price and acquisition of the large Canadian asset have seen it become one of the few resources small caps on an upward trend in 2024, lifting 21% YTD.
Back to FMR and the 70.5km2 Fairfield has over 15km of strike potential including several copper occurrences immediately adjacent to the Dorchester sediment-hosted copper resource.
It’s hope will be that previous explorer have failed to hit the target on ground that has been turned over by various parties since the 1960s, when lower grade copper mines weren’t on the minds of explorers.
Hits by Noranda Exploration in 1993 in diamond drilling found smoke without identifying the fire at the Demoiselle prospect, including strikes of 8.1m at 0.86% Cu in DEM-93-1 including 4.5m at 1.27% Cu; and 0.3m at 10.5% Cu and a 24.1m zone of mineralisation in DEM-93-5 including 7.7m at 0.36% Cu, 6.4m at 0.33% Cu and 3.3m at 0.36% Cu.
FMR believes the prospects at Fairfield may boast similarities to sediment hosted deposits that have been discovered in Africa in the interceding years, notably in Botswana’s Kalahari Copper Belt where Sandfire Resources – SFR recently opened the soon to be 55,000tpa Motheo mine.
“The property claims comprise over 15 km of prospective strike secured and 70.5 sq km ground staked over prospective areas represented by several known mineral occurrences, soil anomalies and geophysical anomalies identified by previous operators that are underexplored by modern techniques,” FMR said in its prospectus.
“It is important to note that sediment-hosted copper deposits known to be prospective at Fairfield display similarities to several deposits around the world in a similar geological setting. The most renowned sediment-hosted copper deposit in the word is the Central African Copper Belt (CACB) which is the largest district of sediment-hosted copper deposits in the world.”
It also has the Fintry project, a 12km landholding of the Nagagami River alkalic complex in Ontario, with many similarities to the nearby Hecla-Kilmer REE-niobium discovery.
Historic exploration at the project focused on ultramafic nickel, yet is underexplored for REE or niobium.
High time for copper
The reemergence of junior copper explorers on the ASX comes as prices for the commodity run at high levels compared to the rest of the battery and EV metal complex thanks to shortages resulting to disappointing supply from major producers in Latin America.
Not all explorers will be successful, especially those with early stage projects like FMR’s, and indeed one reason so many juniors and majors are chasing copper assets is because discovery rates have been so putrid.
But the size of the prize is significant if a new copper discovery can be made.
MOD Resources was among the last junior copper explorers to fulfil the promise, sold to Sandfire with its Motheo project in Botswana in a cash and shares deal worth $166m.
It’s been worth more to holders who stuck around, with SFR shares not far off all time highs. Copper prices were trading at around US$2.70/lb when that deal was cut. They’re around US$4.50/lb today, with analysts suggesting prices will need to hit US$5.50/lb or above to incentivise new large scale producers.
The post IPO Watch: FMR refreshes itself and loads up Canadian copper hunt appeared first on Stockhead.
