Latest news with #TrekMetals
News.com.au
11 hours ago
- Business
- News.com.au
Resources Top 5: Trek steps up its gold exploration pace at Christmas Creek
A diamond rig will expand the high-impact drill program of Trek Metals at Christmas Creek Soil sampling has resulted in the identification of 15 gold anomalous zones at the Miriam project Evion Group will supply expandable graphite from its Indian JV to a US graphite supply chain Your standout small cap resources stocks for Wednesday, June 24, 2025 Trek Metals (ASX:TKM) Living up to its name, Trek Metals climbed to 9.5c, a new high of almost two years and a step up of 15.86% on Tuesday's close, after revealing it will pick up the pace of exploration at Christmas Creek gold project in WA's Kimberley region. Although it closed at 8.6c, a lift of 4.88%, the company has increased almost four-fold since the end of February on the back of a capital raising and a string of positive Christmas Creek announcements, supported by strong gold prices. Trek Metals (ASX:TKM) is adding a diamond rig to expand the high-impact drill program at Christmas Creek and expects the rig from DDH1 Drilling to arrive on site in early July. This rig will enable deeper exploration targeting and provide the company with detailed structural information relating to gold mineralisation. Initial drilling will test the Martin prospect where earlier reverse circulation drilling had returned high-grade intersections of 10m at 12.66g/t gold from 59m and 10m at 7.34g/t from 94m in hole 24XRC097. 'The securing of this second rig to undertake diamond drilling at Christmas Creek represents an exciting milestone, providing the opportunity to get down deeper into the system and obtain a much clearer picture of the geology and structural controls of the gold mineralisation,' chief executive officer Derek Marshall said. TKM has a reverse circulation program underway to test extensions of the same high-grade mineralisation with initial assays expected in mid to late July 2025. This program started in early June with the initial objective of testing for extensions of high-grade intervals at the Martins target. Once this work is completed, the RC rig will move to follow-up encouraging results at the Zahn and Coogan targets. 'The initial RC holes have been drilled underneath, down-dip and along strike from the high-grade intercepts achieved at the Martin prospect last year, as we aim to fully delineate what we believe to be a significant stacked high-grade vein system,' Marshall said. Christmas Creek comprises a previously unexplored, largely concealed district-scale gold and rare earths exploration opportunity southwest of Halls Creek. Prior to its acquisition by the company in December 2023, it was part of Newmont Exploration's global exploration portfolio. Since then, TKM has secured additional tenements to add to the district-scale greenfields gold and rare earths exploration opportunity. Future Battery Minerals (ASX:FBM) Soil sampling by Future Battery Minerals has resulted in the identification of 15 gold anomalous zones at the Miriam project in WA's Goldfields and outlined the potential for shallow, high-grade discoveries. Multiple samples returned results above 0.1g/t gold with a peak value of 3.03g/t gold and have highlighted a developing 1.75km gold anomaly. Many of the anomalous zones are coincident with previously identified structural targets produced from geophysics, with results serving to upgrade the Forrest prospect and regional targets including the Jungle structural trend. Work was conducted with the aim of identifying areas of elevated or anomalous gold and to consider their importance for the targeting of shallow regolith and bedrock hosted gold. All surface geochemical sampling was collated with the evaluated results including 300 samples recently collected by FMB and submitted to LabWest for analysis. Future Battery Minerals (ASX:FBM) managing director and CEO Nick Rathjen said the company's boots on the ground and activity-focused exploration strategy had returned 'exceptional' results, strongly evidenced by the growing exploration potential across its broader Coolgardie portfolio. 'Importantly, the emergence of the Canyon target with a 1.75km striking anomaly is untested and increases the scale potential for the project,' he said. 'Ground preparations are underway for the upcoming initial drill program at Miriam that remains on track to commence in July. 'In light of the strong geophysical and geochemical results and scale of the Canyon target, it's now advanced to drill-ready status and will be tested alongside Forrest in this program.' FBM remains on track to begin an initial RC drill program at Miriam in July 2025, with all permits in place. A second heritage survey is also scheduled for July 2025, covering prospective areas which FBM intends to test in subsequent drilling scheduled for late Q3 2025. Shares closed at 1.8c after climbing 25% to a daily top of 2c. Olympio Metals (ASX:OLY) Olympio Metals raced further ahead, hitting a new 12-month high of 13.5c, an increase of 68.75% on the May 24 close, before ending the day at 11c. This came after the Canadian-focused gold explorer observed visible gold in its very first drill hole at the Bousquet project in Quebec. The result was from Paquin prospect and occurred within a 9m zone of quartz veining, sulphides and alteration from 183m which extended mineralisation to the west. The hole is being logged and sampled with priority and samples will be submitted for assay with results expected by mid-July. 'We are delighted to see visible gold in our very first hole at Paquin, which has extended the gold mineralisation to the west. This is a great start and confirms for us that there is great potential in the Bousquet gold project,' Olympio's managing director Sean Delaney said. 'The Bousquet project is perfectly positioned for gold exploration success, having multi-million-ounce gold deposits to the east and west along the Cadillac Break with year-round access for drilling.' Evion Group (ASX:EVG) Vertically integrated graphite developer Evion Group has reached an agreement to supply expandable graphite from its Indian joint venture to a leading US graphite supply chain company with shares reaching 1.9c, an increase of 26.67% on the previous close. The maiden US order represents around 80 tonnes of expandable graphite shipped from the 50/50 JV Panthera graphite facility near Pune, India. About $400,000 in revenue will be generated from the order and it follows the maiden shipment for the JV in the March 2025 quarter. 'This shipment signals a broader shift in the global supply landscape, with growing demand from US industries for high-quality, non- Chinese sources of critical minerals like expandable graphite,' Evion managing director David Round said. 'Our Panthera Graphite facility has demonstrated its ability to deliver at scale, and we hope this is the first step in establishing a strong, long-term, strategic partnership with the US market. 'We believe this is likely to be the first of many future orders and we look forward to updating the market shortly around our planned, substantial growth and development plans in India.' Negotiations continue to regularly supply the US and other global buyers in Europe and Asia. Expandable graphite is essential for thermal management and fire retardancy across the aerospace, EV, energy storage, military applications and electronics sectors. Noble Helium (ASX:NHE) Noble Helium is making progress with its refinancing and strategic turnaround and this is reflected by investor confidence with shares climbing from 1.2c on June 18 to a high of 3.4c, an increase of 41.7% on the June 24 close. The latest catalyst has been executing a favourable Letter of Amendment to a Convertible Note Agreement with New York-based investor Obsidian Global GP, LLC. Under the amended terms, Obsidian has agreed to not sell any shares in the company or issue a conversion notice until the sooner of a successful refinancing of the company or September 30, 2025. In addition, the company has terminated an At-The-Market Subscription Agreement with Dolphin Corporate Investments. 'These steps are a crucial part of the refinancing and strategic turnaround of Noble Helium,' Noble Helium's non-executive chairman Dennis Donald said. 'The board intends to issue further information in the near future and would like to thank Obsidian for its ongoing support of the company.'
News.com.au
30-04-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
Capital raisings have these explorers cashed and ready to drill for precious metals
Capital raisings are the primary method for funding resource exploration programs Asra Minerals, Errawarra Resources and Trek Metals have all raised funds for exploration These drill programs could be the catalyst for a discovery that has the potential to transform the respective companies To make a discovery you need to drill and in order to drill you need to be able to secure funding. So if a junior explorer is running on empty, it's hard to envisage them pulling out that big, company-making find. While the mileage from such programs might vary widely, success can be game changing if the results are impressive enough. One notable example is Spartan Resources (ASX:SPR) which raised $19 million in early 2022 before drilling to test a westerly extension at Gilbey's North and uncovered the Never Never deposit. Then known as Gascoyne Resources, it went on to shut the Dalgaranga mine and raise another $50m in a recapitalisation which delivered the powder to drill out the new orebody fully. It now hosts ~1.5Moz at over 8g/t, with the nearby Pepper find taking its high grade underground inventory to over 2.3Moz at more than 9g/t. Without supportive shareholders that success, a ~1500% share price gain and $2.4bn takeover offer from Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS) never come to fruition. So it pays to look out for companies which have tapped the market for fresh equity and have drilling programs on the horizon. You never know which could turn up trumps. Here a few who could be on the right path. Asra Minerals (ASX:ASR) In mid-April, Asra Minerals raised $3m through a two-tranche share placement priced at 0.2c per share to key new and existing institutional and sophisticated investors to fund an aggressive exploration campaign with a focus on its gold assets in WA's Leonora region. The company holds more than 725km2 of highly prospective tenure in this region with its Leonora North-Mt Stirling asset sitting close to Vault Minerals' (ASX:VAU) 4Moz King of the Hills mine. It is also located close to Genesis Minerals' (ASX:GMD) Leonora and Kookynie operations. Executive chairman Paul Summers told Stockhead that Leonora was really interesting as it was originally opened up by old timers from 1880-90 through to the beginning of World War One, which essentially ended their activity. However, they left behind a rich legacy that include an enormous amount of evidence of high-grade gold. 'I think we've got 155 individual shafts, and these were where the old-timers were working down on fairly narrow quartz veins, hoping to reach the source of that high-grade gold,' Summers said. 'A lot of the time that was pretty hard going, a lot of the time they didn't get there.' He adds that Leonora is home to some 'absolutely wonderful and profitable' gold mines and that the best place to make a new discovery is next to existing gold mines. 'We know we're in the right location. We know we've got the right rocks that are hosting the high-grade gold and that's really a starting point.' Summers noted the company's exploration strategy has two prongs, the first of which is aimed at methodically increasing its existing 200,000oz of established JORC resources that's spread across four areas. 'That's what I'd call the fairly high confidence drilling into something that you really know you know where it's at and you're drilling to expand an existing resource' he said. 'In parallel to that, we also did a lot of regional work last year where we used aeromagnetic to prove that areas previously mapped as being granites were in fact mafic rocks that are known to host gold deposits in this area.' This aeromagnetic survey data has been combined with mapping to identify new target areas that have never been drilled before. Summers said the company was going to stage operations to ensure it was busy for the next six months. 'We've got one operational team that will methodically work through the reverse circulation drilling, then the diamond drilling, and then we're going to do a lot of regional aircore drill,' he added. 'Because at this gold price, we feel that as much as it's obviously very good to improve your existing resources, we think we have the right ground to make a new discovery and I think in this market that's exactly what the market wants to see.' Drilling is expected to start imminently thanks to the ready availability of rigs in the Leonora region and will carry on for up to three months as the company works through various different phases and targets. 'I think we'll start to see results mid to late June just with assays and the time it takes you to get stuff done,' Summers said. 'Logically I think this will be a good program and it'll lead to the need to do more follow-up.' Errawarra Resources (ASX:ERW) Another company that has seen $3m flood into its coffers for exploration is Errawarra Resources which wrapped up a placement priced at 2.7c to advance the Elizabeth Hill project in WA's Pilbara region that it had acquired in March 2025. Elizabeth Hill is a historical producer from which some 1.2Moz of silver was extracted from just 17,000t of ore at an eye-popping head head grade of ~2200g/t. Operations at the mine ceased in 2000 because silver price dropped, but current silver prices – close to 7x higher than the US$5/oz seen when Elizabeth Hill closed – could inspire a revival. Historical drilling has returned bonanza grade intercepts including 11.7m at 5371g/t silver from 13m while various explorers over the years have identified anomalous silver soil results across land package, which has been consolidated for the first time by ERW. Speaking to Stockhead columnist Barry FitzGerald in early April, executive director Bruce Garlick said having the sole right to explore for silver at Elizabeth Hill was a game changer. 'We have an existing deposit there and we have to now expand our thinking. We also have the added advantage of a 180km2 tenement that has never really been in existence before,' he said. Having already done soil sampling and geochemical surveying, the company plans to identify drill targets in the coming weeks before launching drilling that will initially focused on near mine areas. 'What we are trying to do is identify the target areas, then hone in on those targets areas with ERM and decide which to put drilling into,' Garlick added. ERW, soon to be renamed West Coast Silver, will also follow up on the Munni Munni fault, which is considered to be prospective for repetitive deposits. 'Once we have got some good assays hopefully coming out of these drill holes, we will understand the future a lot better than we do right now,' he concluded. Late in April, Trek Metals saw such strong demand from new and existing sophisticated investors for a $3.5m placement priced at 5c per share that it had to implement scale-backs. This placement included a cornerstone investment of $500,000 from Patronus Resources (ASX:PTN). Proceeds from the placement will be used to fast-track the next phase of drilling at its Christmas Creek gold project in WA's Kimberley region. The 1183km2 Christmas Creek project to the southwest of Halls Creek is a previously unexplored, largely concealed district-scale gold and rare earths exploration opportunity. Previous exploration to test if the area is an extension of the prolific Granites-Tanami Orogen had demonstrated a correlation to the sequences that host Newmont Mining's Tanami gold mine in the Northern Territory. Drilling carried out by TKM in late 2024 returned thick, high-grade intercepts such as 10m at 12.66g/t gold from 59m and 10m at 7.34g/t gold from 94m. Visible gold has been noted in these high-grade intersections and the Martin prospect was interpreted to be an orogenic gold system, with similar characteristics to the large Tanami deposits over the border. Reverse circulation drilling scheduled to commence in May with an initial focus on expanding the high-grade gold hits at the Martin prospect. Drilling will also test other priority targets at Christmas Creek including Zahn and Coogan. 'In our view, the Christmas Creek project represents a major discovery opportunity as part of the upcoming drill season, with the potential to confirm a large-scale orogenic gold find of considerable scale that we believe could quickly re-rate the company as we drill test below and immediately along strike from the thick, high-grade intercepts reported late last year,' chief executive officer Derek Marshall said in the placement announcement on April 24.
