Resources Top 5: 35pc copper fit for a Roman emperor rocks morning trade

Augustus’ rock chip samples at Ti Tree hit 35%, shares go ballistic
Clara and Savannah finally get Ashford deal over the line
Adavale looks to start drilling for uranium in South Australia

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in morning trade, Thursday, July 11. Prices accurate at time of writing.

Augustus Minerals (ASX:AUG)

Rock chip samples showing enormous percentages of copper and gold from its Ti Tree project in WA’s Gascoyne – up to an eye-whopping 35% Cu and 10.1g/t Au – have put an absolute rocket under junior explorer AUG today.

To put this in perspective, if you found copper grades in rock chips of ~2%, you’re doing pretty well and it would warrant further investigation.

Huge grades of up to 236g/t silver and 5% molybdenum have been found, too – and all aforementioned mineralisations were found across the Tiberius, South Snowy, Claudius and Justinian prospects.

AUG’s Ti Tree project straddles the Ti Tree Shear Zone, where all sorts of mineralisation is on offer and ASX explorers’ Delta Lithium (ASX:DLI) and Voltaic Strategic Resources (ASX:VSR) are digging up lithium and Dreadnought Resources (ASX:DRE) has a rare earths play.

“These rock chips continue to highlight the untapped potential of the Ti Tree project to host significant precious and base metal mineralisation,” AUG GM of exploration Andrew Ford says.

“Drilling is planned for Q3 2024 with assistance from the co-funded EIS drilling grant as announced 2nd of May 2024.”

AUG was heavily traded on open and shares have skyrocketed +142%, up from 5.4c to 9.2c per share at time of writing.

There’s 35% copper in these bad boys. Source: AUG.

Lithium Australia (ASX:LIT)

LIT subsidiary Envirostream has achieved a maiden operating cash profit from its battery-recycling gig that takes batteries from bigwig customers such as LG Energy Solution, Volvo and Hyundai and sells them for profit.

Last quarter, Envirostream achieved collection volumes of 445t, revenue of $2.50m and a gross profit of $1.56m.

Not a bad side hustle for the lithium-focused company that aims to disrupt the Li2O supply chain with innovative technologies.

It marks another milestone in the company’s strategic shift to an upstream-focused operational model that aims to increase its ‘fee for service’ proportion of the recycling revenue mix.

Shares in the junior were up 38.9% to swap at 2.5c per share.

Clara Resources Australia (ASX:C7A) / Savannah Goldfields (ASX:SVG)

C7A has just sold its share in London-based First Tin for $4.3m, a game-changing deal that gives it cash on hand to complete the purchase of the remaining 60% of the Ashford coking coal project in NSW from SVG, which owns Renison Coal.

The total cost of the deal is US$3.95m, leaving more than enough cash for C7A to discharge its $1.1m debt facility.

SVG will walk away with a 19.5% interest in C7A too, making it a major shareholder.

The deal had been stalled for a couple of months and investors got a bit jumpy, depressing both stocks’ share price – however, now it’s over the line, both companies have turned the corner.

Shares shot into space on the news and are up 145% for C7A trading at 2.7c per share and up 30.44% to 3c per share for SVG.

Adavale Resources (ASX:ADD)

Yellowcake fever is still prevalent, with U3O8 bouncing around the $80-$90/lb mark, way up from the same time last year when uranium prices were roughly $50/lb.

No wonder then, that ADD has announced it’s rapidly moving towards an extensive AC drilling program and is doubling its prospective uranium tenure in South Australia.

After acquiring the EL6553 licence from Kilonova Metals to broaden the scope of its Maree Embayment project to 2258km2, it’s adding another 2446km2 to its landholdings.

The uranium explorer is running fingers over the MacDonnell Creek and George Creek prospects, which are close to the uranium-rich inliers of the northern Flinders Ranges where the nearby Beverley and Honeymoon U308 deposits are embedded.

A 3000m AC drill campaign is about to kick off and will be the first time drilling has been conducted at the prospects since Cauldron Energy’s (ASX:CXU) foray into the area.

Shares in the ASX penny stock soared 25% on open trade today to 0.5c.