Anti-hero: Share prices rise high on antimony finds

Stibnite – described on the Periodic Table simply as “Sb” – a lustrous grey metal or metalloid.

It was used in ancient times as a powder in medicine and cosmetics and is also known by its Arabic name, kohl.

What the heck are you talking about, I can almost hear you saying! Well, we can tell you it is better known as antimony, the still little-known mineral that has caused an incredible stir among ASX investors during the past week … and here is the why.

China has imposed a ban on its exporting of the critical mineral that will kick in from September 15, with the nation’s strategic reserves deemed to be worryingly low. The news hit like a bolt out of the blue and sent market punters crazy looking for stocks with known antimony deposits.

The metal is primarily used to form alloys for use in steel, military equipment such as bullets, machine bearings and as a fire-retardant additive. It also has found wide use to improve solar panel efficiency – a growing need with the global transition to clean energy.

Several ASX-listed companies featuring antimony in their projects saw their stocks take off on a run last Friday as news of China’s ban filtered through. However, the same shares continued rocketing along this week, continuing their ascent amid astonishing volumes for, in the most part, junior companies exploring or developing projects with the suddenly “in-demand” mineral.

Companies such as Larvotto Resources and Nagambie Resources have sizeable deposits of the mineral, while others including Sun Silver are planning to re-assay part of their resources to see if they, too, can stump up economic clumps of the good, old antimony.

While all three companies saw their stock rise this week, it was Larvotto, which holds the Hillgrove gold-antimony project near Armidale in NSW – Australia’s biggest deposit of the metal – which proved to be the cream of the crop. Closing last week at 18c, its shares bolted out of the blocks on Monday, opening at 21c before touching an intraday high of 27.5c.

The near week-long “antimony party” then continued with the company’s shares eventually reaching 38c on Thursday, for a healthy 111.11 per cent advance for the week. Volumes went ballistic for the bullet-hardening mineral developer, with 40.4 million shares traded on Monday and some 118 million for the week.

And all it really took was for Larvotto to reveal on Wednesday that it had secured the final drilling permits needed for its second exploration program at Hillgrove and that the rig would mobilise to the site next Monday to start plunging in some 5250m of reverse circulation (RC) at its Clarks Gully target.

The backstory to Hillgrove – and it’s an interesting one – is that Larvotto, like most mining juniors, was on the lookout for a project to increase its critical metals inventory and came across the on-sale project after administrators were appointed to wind up the affairs of Red River Resources, which was placed in liquidation in August last year.

In October, Larvotto reached agreement to virtually steal the project for about $8 million (consisting of a $3 million purchase and about $5 million to replace the environmental bonds required by the NSW Government). In one stunning negotiation, the company increased the level of its resources by 1.4 million ounces of gold equivalent at about $6 per ounce.

Management says the resource, in fact, comprises 1.036 million ounces of gold and 90,000 tonnes of antimony.

But what really hits you between the eyes like a Mike Tyson straight right is that the credits from the antimony using today’s price of about US$23,000 (AU$34,300), results in a negative cost (-$82) to produce an ounce of gold, paving the way for a potentially lucrative project.

Still, it was not all “antimony mania” on the ASX, with Dundas Minerals shares surging after it revealed that re-assaying of the final 6m of a recently-drilled RC hole returned a solid 9.5 grams per tonne gold from a depth of 146m at its Windanya project that sits some 60km north of the famous gold-mining town of Kalgoorlie and adjacent to the well-travelled Goldfields Highway.

The company had previously provided composite samples to the lab, comprising 4m and 2m samples. But an error in numbering the composite samples caused confusion, with the results reported for the wrong composites. Dundas decided to have the assays re-sampled on a 1m basis, with the 146m-to-147m interval returning the high-grade 9.5g/t slice.

The preceding 1m interval from 145m to 146m also produced 0.725g/t.

But there was no confusion among market punters, who loved the news and sent the at-times thinly-traded shares along the highway to the sky to touch 7.2c for a tasty gain of 188 per cent.

Volumes that had averaged less than 20,000 units daily for the preceding 10 trading days – including just 199 shares traded last Friday – absolutely soared, with 32.8 million shares changing hands on Wednesday, the day of the re-assay results being released.

Management, sensing a great opportunity to strike while the golden iron was hot called a trading halt Thursday morning, to reveal later that it had raised $870,000 before costs with the issue of 21.15 million new shares at 4.1c each.

It will now be interesting to see what comes from the company’s hole extension to a depth of 300m.

MTM Critical Metals also caught the attention of the market – and lithium production and downstream conversion companies – with news of a significant breakthrough in the development of the company’s Flash Joule Heating (FJH) technology. It has enabled the successful conversion of spodumene grading 6 per cent to be converted directly to lithium-chloride (LiCl) in a single, acid-free unit operation.

MTM says the innovative process has the potential to transform lithium refining with how spodumene, the world’s leading source of lithium for electric vehicle (EV) batteries, is processed. The company believes the innovation can eliminate several stages of conventional processing methods and provide substantial savings in capital and operating expenditure and reductions in emissions.

The market agreed with the potential game-changing nature of the high-tech process and piled into the company’ shares, with 20.5 million units traded on Wednesday and then a healthy 8.8 million on Thursday to drive the price as high as 6.5c.

The 80.56 per cent gain provided a much-needed boost to the share price, which recently hovered near multi-year lows.

First Lithium was another big gainer after a phase-two drill campaign at its Blakala project in Mali successfully intersected many thick intersections of lithium, including several high-grade intervals recording more than 2 per cent lithium oxide hits of the once red-hot mineral.

Bringing back memories of the good ol’ days of lithium fever, the company’s shares were driven to reach a peak of 17c on Thursday for a weekly gain of 78.95 per cent, having closed last week at 9.5c. The shares recorded a lovely one-day gain of 80.85 per cent after closing at 9.4c on Wednesday – a nice little earn if you can get it.

Volumes headed north with shares changing hands at greater than four-times First Lithium’s past 20-day average daily volume.

A series of impressive intersections consisting of 41m running 1.91 per cent lithium oxide from 81m, 20m at 2.03 per cent from 69m and 32.6m going 1.7 per cent from 99m also included 14m at 2.02 per cent. An additional slice of 6.6m going 2.79 per cent within a 29.7m hit of 1.66 per cent of the critical battery mineral certainly turned a few heads.

The West African country of Mali has been in the news recently, revealing the implementation of a new mining code. Several junior miners have said that the adoption of the 2023 Mali Mining code reaffirms the Republic’s commitment to mining and its desire to once again become one of West Africa's top gold and mineral producers.

Now, we have told you before that here at Bulls N’ Bears, we love a late Friday runner to send us off to the weekend on a happy note – and this one is a doozy.

After making this column’s prestigious list back in February with a 90 per cent jump, life sciences and consumer health products company Bioxyne is back with a bang, ramping up 240 per cent on the back of … no, you didn’t guess it … the first commercial run of edible cannabis “Gummies” produced by its subsidiary, Breathe Life Sciences.

The company’s share price wafted up from a close last week of just 0.5c to hit an intraday trading high today of 1.7c on the back of the announcement.

Just last month, Breathe Life Sciences confirmed it had received deposits on purchase orders for $2 million worth of its of “THC Gummies”, which it described as a milestone marking the first commercial purchase of Australian-made edible cannabis products manufactured under the company’s “TGA GMP” licence.

And it is scaling up its gummy manufacturing capabilities from 2 million single doses per month up to 6 million to meet anticipated market demand.

But no matter how yummy these gummies may be, Bulls N’ Bears suggests anyone using them stick to the medically-prescribed dose.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au