Sentinel gets Big Spring in its step with Nevada gold deal

A home town deal involving a gold asset in Nevada has elevated the status of the recently listed Sentinel (ASX:SNM) to that of a go to ASX-listed junior with exposure to the opportunity-rich US gold industry.

Only listed in October last year in a $10 million IPO by co-founders Mark Williams (ex-Red 5) and Matt Herbert (ex-FMG/Rio Tinto), Sentinel has struck a $26 million cash and shares deal to acquire the Big Springs gold project from the Mark Clark-led Capricorn (ASX-CMM).

The deal doubles Sentinel’s US gold resource base to 2 million ounces, split pretty much equally between Big Springs and the gold project that Sentinel came to the market with in October, the Columbia gold-silver project in Montana.

Big Springs was picked up as a secondary asset by Capricorn in its July 2025 acquisition of Warriedar Resources, principally for its Golden Range project in the WA Murchison region and about 90km from Capricorn’s Mount Gibson project.

Capricorn is working on making Mt Gibson a 150,000oz annual gold producer to add to the 150,000oz a year to come from its existing Karlawinda after an expansion.

So while Big Springs’ 1.01Moz (15.5Mt at 2g/t) way over in Nevada was not going to be a big deal for Capricorn with its 10-years plus 300,000oz production profile and its attendant $5.77 billion market cap, Big Springs is a big deal for Sentinel.

Sentinel’s 20c shares from its October IPO were trading at 62c ahead of the Big Springs pick-up, valuing its ordinary shares at $64m. So the company has been travelling along nicely on the strength of its Columbia project alone.

After adding in the shares from a minimum placement of $15 million at 58c a share, the market cap will be more like $80m for a combined Big Springs and Columbia, suggesting a re-rating of the stock is in order.

Needless to say, Sentinel views the Big Springs acquisition as transformational. It has certainly been done at an attractive EV/Resource per ounce multiple, at a level in fact not achievable in the crowded Western Australian goldfields.

And given the extra scale it delivers, Sentinel could well start pulling in more North American and global institutional investors.

But the real value kicker will come from the drill bit, with Herbert (CEO) saying the initial focus will be on drilling high-grade extensions beneath the seven historical pits (386,000oz produced between 1987 to 1993) and optimising mine plans worked up by previous owners for open pit and underground operations.

Big Springs sits adjacent and to the north of the historic Jerritt Canyon mining complex owned by Vancouver-based First Majestic Silver Corp. The $C11.8 billion silver-gold producer placed the operation in to care and maintenance in March 2023.

But it is coming back in to production, with the restart of the roaster operations for the refractory ore (Big Springs is refractory as well) planned for the second half of 2027. No wonder, it has a 4.1Moz measured and indicated resource, along with 3.7Moz in the inferred category.

Apart from Jerritt Canyon, Nevada has a number of roasting/autoclave facilities which could become important to Sentinel as its plots its course to a development of Big Springs. There is work to do before a development becomes a consideration.

So the near-term value catalyst is what comes from a 10,000m maiden drilling program by Sentinel targeting multiple high-grade shoot extensions beneath the old pits, starting at North Sammy where an 18.3m intercept grading 33.3g/t gold sits in the historical data base.

Meanwhile, Sentinel’s maiden drilling program at Columbia continues, with first assay results expected in about 6-weeks.

Australian Vanadium Ltd (ASX:AVL):

Vanadium stocks. There is not many of them on the ASX. But those that are present should be doing a whole lot better than they have been so far this year.

Vanadium is a critical key steel additive (90% of consumption) so it could be that the plateauing of global steel production is crimping investor interest.

Vanadium projects are also big ticket items. And in the current market, there is an aversion to pre-revenue projects involving big licks of capital in a commodity that is seemingly devoid of price rise impetus.

Having said that, things are actually as exciting as they can be for the ASX vanadium players as the WA Cook government is closing in on selecting its preferred tender to build-own-operate a 50MW/10-hour vanadium flow battery (VRB) for power problem-riddled Kalgoorlie.

It was an election promise and comes with $150m in funding support.

The Kalgoorlie vanadium battery energy system (VBESS) project, as it is known, recently entered Stage Two of the expressions of interest phase.

Kalgoorlie’s energy woes are a function of the mining centre sitting at the end of a 700km power line which is susceptible to storms and fire, and dodgy maintenance. On its own, the VBESS project stands as a neat solution.

But it is more than that. It is the sort of state-building stuff on which WA has long prided itself. So the VBESS project is seen by Premier Cook as the chance to get to WA, and Australia for that matter, in to the VRB building business.

It is the high-growth sector of the vanadium demand outlook, much like large scale lithium batteries are on track to overtake demand from the electric vehicles sector. VRB’s have major advantages over their lithium cousins when it comes to their safer chemistry (data centres and hot climates), longer discharge duration and multi-decade life.

In Cook’s ideal world, the Kalgoorlie project could be the start of a new mine-to-battery industry for WA/Australia, a build out of sovereign capacity of sorts. The Chinese are already going down that track, with VRB’s part of their energy solution with 6GWh already installed and 44GWh in construction or under consideration.

Kudos to the WA government for giving WA/Australia a chance to become a key player in the VRB world, with Kalgoorlie an important testing ground of VRB economics and operating capabilities.

Success will create new options for VRBs elsewhere in WA/Australia, and overseas in time.

As mentioned earlier, none of the excitement around the Kalgoorlie project has been reflected in the share price performance of the ASX-listed vanadium players. Given a decision on the preferred tender is fast approaching, it could be time to take more notice of the process.

Australian Vanadium Ltd (ASX:AVL) has said it will be lodging a submission to the Stage Two  expressions of interest process by the deadline of July 20.

It comes at the process with an integrated offering of having a big vanadium resource near Meekatharra, its electrolyte manufacturing capability in Perth, and a technology relationship with a Japanese VRB group, Sumitomo Electric.

AVL last traded at 15c a share for a market cap of $58 million.

Richmond Vanadium Technology (ASX:RVT) owns the Richmond-Julia Creek vanadium deposit in Queensland and last month signed a collaboration agreement with RKP, a Chinese VRB group.

RVT last said the Kalgoorlie project was one of the opportunities the pair had under evaluation. It  last traded at 9.9c for a $22m market cap.