Spectacular Spartan results lead day of big news-flow at RRS
Spartan Resources (ASX: SPR)
Shares in Spartan Resources briefly hit a two-year high intraday yesterday after the company reported “spectacular” new hits grading more than 1000 grams per tonne gold at its Never Never discovery, part of the Dalgaranga gold project in Western Australia.
The intercept of 0.28m at 1093gpt gold was within a broader hit of 5.1m at 23.07gpt (84.17gpt uncut), which sat within 11.1m at 12.1gpt gold (40.18gpt uncut).
“We have delivered some of the best drill intercepts I’ve ever seen,” Spartan managing director Simon Lawson declared yesterday.
“These are really meaningful grades.”
Never Never already has an existing resource of 721,100 ounces of gold at 5.85gpt.
“We’re well on our way to 1 million ounces,” Lawson said.
Spartan is targeting a reserve of more than 300,000oz at over 4gpt gold which Lawson said the company would “absolutely achieve” and would underpin a mine life of at least five years.
Canaccord Genuity analyst Tim McCormack has a speculative buy rating and price target of 60c.
Spartan rose as high as 48.5c yesterday, up from 10c in February.
“Our share price is absolutely ripping but we’re still undervalued compared to our peers,” Lawson said.
Talisman Mining (ASX: TLM)
Also riding high yesterday was Kerry Harmanis-chaired Talisman Mining, which gained another 8.8% after a strong run so far this month.
The company emerged from a trading halt late last month to report a large zone of lead-silver-zinc mineralisation in the initial drilling at its Rip n Tear prospect, part of the Lachlan project in New South Wales.
The reverse circulation hole, drilled into a 2.5km-long moving loop electromagnetic (MLEM) anomaly, returned 192m at 1.3% lead and 10 grams per tonne silver.
Managing director Andrew Munckton described the hole yesterday as an exploration breakthrough for the company.
“It’s encouragement that we’re onto a significant mineralised system,” he said.
“It’s an unusual style of mineralisation for this Cobar Basin.”
The hole was suspended at 232m depth still in mineralisation, due to water inflows.
Talisman followed up last week a second hit of 84m at 1.5% lead, 15gpt silver and 0.1% zinc, 1km from the initial intercept.
“This looks like it’s 2km or 3km long at least,” Munckton said.
The company will conduct further moving loop electromagnetic surveys to get a sense of how long Rip n Tear actually is.
While Talisman was focused on copper at Lachlan, Munckton said the company was commodity agnostic when it came to a discovery.
“This is a very exciting discovery and we haven’t really seen anything like this before,” he said.
Kingsland Resources (ASX: KNG)
Managing director Richard Maddocks spoke to RRS delegates, fresh from releasing the thickest intercept to date from the Leliyn graphite discovery in the Northern Territory.
On Monday, the company reported a “quite exceptional” hit of 285m at 6.1% total graphitic carbon, including 79m at 10.5% TGC.
“You don’t get results better than that in graphite projects around the world,” Maddocks said.
Kingsland wrapped up its program of 53 reverse circulation and 11 diamond holes on Sunday and couldn’t be happier with the results to date.
In March, the company reported an exploration target of 200-250 million tonnes at 8-11% TGC for 16-27Mt of contained graphite.
“The tonnage potential is quite large,” Maddocks said, adding that the results received to date had validated the exploration target.
Results for three RC and four diamond holes are pending, as metallurgical test work advances.
An initial resource is due in the March quarter of 2024 and will cover just 5km of the 20km graphitic schist.
Gold Hydrogen (ASX: GHY)
A relative newcomer, Gold Hydrogen listed on the ASX in January following a A$20 million initial public offering to capitalise on a projected sixfold increase in demand between now and 2050.
Managing director Neil McDonald likened hydrogen to lithium in Western Australia – explorers have been aware of its presence for many years but there’s been no market for it.
While hydrogen has probably received the most publicity via Andrew Forrest and Fortescue’s green ambitions, GHY is looking to develop natural hydrogen versus Fortescue’s green (ie manufactured) hydrogen.
The company holds the 7820sq.km Ramsey project in South Australia which has a certified prospective resource with an unrisked best estimate of 1.3 billion kilograms, which is enough hydrogen to power one million homes for 40 years.
McDonald said the production cost for natural graphite was about A$1/kg or less versus $6/kg for green hydrogen, before transportation costs.
GHY has drilled its own well, yielding high purity levels of up to 73% hydrogen and confirming historical results.
The Alexander Downer-chaired company will drill a second well this weekend.
“We’ve also got the added bonus of 3.6% helium,” McDonald said, adding that helium was commercially viable at 1% or less.
Aside from Ramsey, GHY has a further 67,512sq.km under exclusive application in SA.
“That’s important for scale,” said McDonald.
