Carnaby hits more copper paydirt at Great Duchess, now up +500% over past month
Pacific Nickel Mines aiming for first nickel production late 2022
GreenX, Santa Fe up on no news
Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Thursday January 3.
CARNABY RESOURCES (ASX:CNB) and DISCOVEX RESOURCES (ASX:DCX)
CNB is up +500% since hitting copper paydirt at the ‘Nil Desperandum’ prospect, part of the Greater Duchess copper-gold project in Mt Isa, Queensland.
Joining them on the journey is minority project partner DCX (free carried 17.5% stake) which is up 225% over the same period.
On December 29 the major discovery was confirmed by assay — 41m at 4.1% copper, which included a 9m chunk grading 10.3%. Very nice.
“Nil Desperandum is shaping up as a major Iron Oxide Copper Gold discovery which is rapidly getting bigger and better at depth,” managing director Rob Watkins says.
“The scale of the mineralised system we are seeing is exceptional.”
Today CNB announced new drilling results from ‘Lady Fanny’ – 3km from Nil Desperandum – which included a highlight 27m @ 2.8% copper and 0.8 g/t gold.
Remarkably, this is the first known recorded drilling within the historical Lady Fanny mining lease area, of which Carnaby owns 100%.
No JV here, but DCX still made significant gains in early trade.
Outcropping copper gold at Lady Fanny has been traced for over 400m strike length, and these first drill results remain ‘open’ along strike and at depth.
“These stunning first pass drill results from Lady Fanny, just 3km north of the spectacular Nil Desperandum high grade discovery, really demonstrate the untapped potential of the greater than 5km long IOCG corridor that is rapidly emerging within the Greater Duchess Copper Gold Project,” CNB managing director Rob Watkins says.
Iron oxide copper gold ore (IOCG) deposits, like BHP’s (ASX:BHP) Olympic Dam, can be tremendously large, simple-to-process concentrations of copper, gold and other economic minerals.
GREENX METALS (ASX:GRX)
(Up on no news)
Formerly coal minnow Prairie Mining, GRX did a full 180-degree swivel by dumping its fossil fuel focus in favour of sexier, ‘new age’ metals like copper, nickel and PGMs.
The main game is some newly acquired ground in Greenland called ‘Arctic Rift’, where historical exploration results are indicative of an extensive mineral system “with potential to host world-class copper deposits”.
Greenland is increasingly recognised as one of exploration’s final frontiers, as melting ice caps reveal more ground. All the big boys want a slice, PDZ says.
As a potentially rather large bonus, GRX say a $1.5 billion (yes, billion) claim for damages against Poland is well advanced.
Claim costs are funded by Litigation Capital Management (LCM), which won’t get paid unless they win.
Since 1998 LCM have funded 237 disputes, with 226 of those being successful. That’s a success rate of over 95%, says GRX.
The $67m market cap stock is up 32% over the past month. The company is looking to raise $4.6m to fund the Greenland acquisition and exploration into the new year.
PACIFIC NICKEL MINES (ASX:PNM)
(Up on no news)
There is no better time to be a near term nickel miner, with prices hitting all-time highs and Elon Musk signing supply deals left and right.
PNM has two nickel laterite direct shipping ore (DSO) projects in the Solomon Islands, ‘Kolosori’ and ‘Jejevo’.
The company has already started early works at the ~5.9Mt Kolosori project in preparation for the main construction program targeted for April/May — which is subject to the completion of the Definitive Feasibility Study, regulatory approvals, and financing.
A scoping study released last year envisaged a production target of 6.23m tonnes at 1.5% Ni for 93,450t of contained nickel.
The project would cost just US$20m to build, with first production targeted in late 2022.
Nickel laterite ores from DSO operations – a low-cost way to get into production — provide feedstock for nickel pig iron production suitable for Chinese stainless-steel producers, PNM says.
Few alternative sources of nickel laterite ore globally exist outside Indonesia (higher jurisdictional risk) and the Philippines (lower grade) to satisfy demand from the domestic Chinese producers.
SANTA FE MINERALS (ASX:SFM)
(Up on no news)
The minnow continues to surge since providing an exploration update yesterday.
The explorer recently signed a deal to earn into the early stage ‘Mt Murray’ project in WA, where it is hunting a nickel-copper-PGE deposit à la Chalice Mining’s (ASX:CHN) Gonneville.
It includes a 4.2km x 1.2km magnetic high zone considered to represent a mafic-ultramafic intrusive package prospective for nickel-copper-PGEs.
This large target is mostly concealed beneath shallow sandplain, SFM says.
Results from a surface sampling program at ‘El Paso’, completed close to a historic anomalous nickel and copper rock sample, are pending.
Also pending are results from sampling at the ‘Ridgeback’ (copper, lead, zinc, gold) and the ‘Watson Well’ (vanadium, titanium, magnetite) targets.
The $17m market cap stock is up 109% over the past month. It had $3.25m in the bank at the end of September.
The post Resources Top 5: Fresh 5-baggers, near term nickel miners, and a possible $1.5bn windfall appeared first on Stockhead.
