High Voltage: Do Any Of These Battery Metals Minnows Have Big Bag Potential?
CORAZON (ASX:CZN)
Nickel, Cobalt
This junior explorer managed to consolidate the entire historic Lynn Lake nickel-copper-cobalt mining centre in Canada.
It is the first time this project has been under the control of one company since the mine — which produced about 206,200 tonnes of nickel and 107,600t copper over 24 years — closed in 1976.
Corazon believes there’s a lot more metal to be found. It has just defined a bunch of nickel sulphide targets for the next phase of drilling, to be finalised after the current Downhole Electromagnetic Geophysical Survey (DHEM) is complete.
PAN ASIA METALS (ASX:PAM)
Lithium, Tungsten
This newly listed tungsten and lithium explorer is one of analyst Gavin Wendt’s top 5 picks in ‘Build your own lithium portfolio’.
Lithium is flying, and so is ferro-tungsten — an alloy of iron (under 30 per cent) and tungsten (over 70 per cent).
Drilling at Pan Asia’s Khao Soon Tungsten Project (KSTP) in Thailand recently returned a large number of shallow intersections at greater than 0.5 per cent WO3, including 7.5m at 1.22 per cent WO3.
The mineralisation remains ‘open’. These are peer group leading results, managing director Paul Lock says.
“We are very pleased with the results, they are generally in line with the Exploration Target model and with these grades and geometries this prospect is shaping up as an open cut target, and the mineralisation remains open along strike and at depth,” he says.
“We have more drilling to do and our success to date is highly encouraging.”
METALS AUSTRALIA (ASX:MLS)
Graphite, Nickel
Earlier this month, Metals Australia completed the acquisition of the ‘Nepean South’, a project neighbouring the historic Nepean nickel sulphide mine 80% owned by Auroch Minerals (ASX:AOU).
Nepean was the second producing nickel mine in Australia, producing 1,108,457t of ore between 1970 and 1987 for 32,202t of nickel metal at an average recovered grade of 2.99%.
Previous drilling at Nepean South hit decent grades but was never really followed up. An EM survey will be followed up with a maiden drilling campaign, the company says.
Work is also underway at the high-grade Lac Rainy graphite project in Quebec with the commencement of advanced stage of metallurgical testwork, designed to improve project economics.
GOLDEN DEEPS (ASX:GED)
Vanadium, Copper
The busy explorer has vanadium, gold silver and copper projects in Australia and Namibia.
In March, it kicked off a mining study on the historic Abenab mine in Namibia.
In April, drilling programs will kick off at the historic, super high grade Khusib Springs and Nosib vanadium copper deposits, also in Namibia.
Khusib Springs produced 300,000t at 10 per cent copper and 584g/t silver between 1996 and 2003 (that’s very high grade) and only closed due to a very low copper price, the company says.
SABRE RESOURCES (ASX:SBR)
Nickel
This is one of Peak Asset Management’s top small cap stock picks for 2021.
Initial drilling results from the Bonanza gold project were disappointing, but this WA explorer has other cards to play.
A scoping study – the first proper look at the economics of a project – has now kicked off at the ‘Sherlock Bay’ nickel project in the Pilbara.
The deposit contains ~99,200 tonnes of nickel metal, 21,700 tonnes of copper metal and 5,400 tonnes of cobalt metal “which has the potential to be increased by further drilling”, the company says.
www.ferroalloynet.com
