Resources Top 5: Gold Road to join the Gold Fields superhighway
Trigg Minerals has increased the antimony potential of Wild Cattle Creek deposit at the Achilles project
Porphyry copper-gold was intersected by Waratah Minerals in maiden drilling at Breccia West
Your standout resources stocks for Monday, May 5, 2025
Gold Road Resources (ASX:GOR)
One of the 'worst kept secrets' in the gold M&A scene has been thrown out in the open with Gold Road Resources relenting to a 'best and final' offer from Gold Fields in a $3.7 billion buyout.
The South African giant will swallow up its junior JV partner in the Gruyere gold mine in a scheme implementation deed that comes at a 43% premium to GOR's price before Gold Fields threw a previous $3.3bn cash bid out in the open.
The specifics are thus: Gold Road shareholders will claim $2.52 per share PLUS cash consideration equivalent to GOR's stake in Northern Star Resources – currently priced at 88c – something that will come into play after NST completes its now approved takeover of Hemi gold mine owner De Grey Mining.
If the scheme becomes effective GOR shareholders are also expected to roll in a 35c per share special dividend (give or take) worth $379m, using up the company's remaining franking credits.
7.5% of GOR shareholders have confirmed they intend to vote in favour of the scheme, and its Tim Netscher chaired board has agreed to the deal unanimously after some mud slinging around an 'opportunistic' offer in March that Gold Fields elected to air publicly.
'The board has been focused at all times on ensuring that we deliver value and act in the best interests of our shareholders. The Gold Road directors consider that the value offered by the all-cash scheme consideration delivers compelling value for Gold Road shareholders compared to what may otherwise be available if Gold Road continued to operate as a standalone entity,' Netscher said.
'The variable cash consideration provides ongoing exposure to the supportive gold price environment up until the effective date of the scheme through Gold Road's shareholding in Northern Star. Additionally, the payment of a special dividend allows Gold Road to realise the full value of the company's franking account balance for eligible shareholders.
'This cash proposal accelerates realisation of Gruyere's value and provides certainty for Gold Road shareholders today at an attractive premium to trading levels prior to receipt of the initial Gold Fields proposal.'
FIRB approval is required but the Aussie Govt tends to find South African investment is lekker. If approved it all goes ahead by October, crystallising a near 40x gain for GOR holders who bought in before the Gruyere discovery was made in the remote Yamarna Belt east of Laverton in October 2013.
$30bn capped Gold Fields will produce more than 1Moz in WA once the deal clears across its Gruyere, Granny Smith, St Ives and Agnew mines.
It's the latest M&A action to light up a gold space flying with Aussie prices in excess of $5000 an ounce. That includes the aforementioned NST-DEG tie-up, a $4.2bn merger between Ramelius Resources and Spartan Resources, $1bn deal to partner Alkane Resources and TSX-listed Mandalay and a host of asset level deals from Greatland Gold, Resolute Mining and more.
Trigg Minerals (ASX:TMG)
After increasing the antimony potential at the Wild Cattle Creek deposit of its Achilles project in northern NSW, Trigg Minerals has lifted 9.5% to 4.7c.
High-grade antimony assays have been returned from samples taken within an historical underground adit at the deposit.
Wild Cattle Creek is Australia's highest-grade primary antimony resource at 1.52Mt at 1.97% antimony, comprising 960,000t at 2.02% in the indicated category and 560,000t at 1.88% inferred.
The historical sample locations and corresponding antimony grades averaging 4.83% appear to have been accurately plotted on a drive plan and were included in an earlier resource estimate and preliminary feasibility report for Dundee Mines.
However, the assays were not included in a 2024 revised resource estimate, providing additional upside and strong potential for resource growth by Trigg.
Notable antimony intersections include 5.32m at 6.7% Sb, 5.42m at 9.6% Sb, 3.64m at 7.3% Sb, 2m at 12.7% Sb and 5m at 3.5% Sb.
Trigg Minerals (ASX:TMG) said the samples confirmed the presence of shallow, high-grade mineralisation within the deposit, suggesting the potential for higher overall grades than those indicated by drilling alone.
The results also reinforce the deposit's geological continuity and potential for early-stage extraction.
"The high-grade results strongly validate the continuity and tenor of antimony mineralisation at Wild Cattle Creek,' managing director Andre Booyzen said.
'These outcomes reinforce our confidence that substantial high-grade mineralisation remains accessible at shallow depths, supporting our broader development strategy, and may inform future mine design by highlighting the potential for early, low-cost extraction."
Significant intersections have also been returned from the parallel Roula lode which were not included in the resource estimate, including 2m at 11.57% Sb and 1.26% tungsten, and 2m at 14.45% Sb and 0.84% W, including 1m at 27.6% Sb
Adit mapping and sampling provide strong evidence for lode repetition along strike and subparallel, complementary lodes, indicating broader structural complexity and exploration upside.
Trigg plans to update the Wild Cattle Creek resource by incorporating unmodelled data to capture additional value from tungsten and gold alongside antimony.
Waratah Minerals (ASX:WTM)
A positive move has been made by Waratah Minerals after porphyry copper-gold was intersected in maiden drilling at Breccia West in the Spur project, 5km west of the giant Cadia Valley project of Newmont in Central West NSW, with shares up by 25% to 25c.
New drilling has intersected broad porphyry copper-gold mineralisation associated with potassic altered magmatic-hydrothermal breccia at Breccia West, with hole BZD001 returning 196m at 0.54% copper equivalent from 1m. This included 0.35% Cu and 0.23g/t Au.
Within this was 84m at 0.62% CuEq (0.40% Cu, 0.26g/t Au) from 29m and this also included 12m at 1.03% CuEq (0.65% Cu, 0.44g/t Au) from 185m.
Another hole, BZD002, identified a separate zone of porphyry mineralisation associated with strongly developed magnetite-rich potassic alteration hosted in basaltic wallrock along strike from a strong magnetic anomaly.
Given the strong association with magnetite, a high priority follow-up 'porphyry core' drill target is defined by a nearby magnetic anomaly and down dip projection of the mineralised magmatic- hydrothermal breccia.
'Intersecting porphyry mineralisation on our maiden drilling program at Breccia West strongly validates the company's exploration strategy and our view that the large area of epithermal gold mineralisation at the Spur Gold Corridor connects with a mineralised porphyry system,' managing director Peter Duerden said.
'The strong association of mineralisation with magnetite porphyry alteration has upgraded the significance of a nearby magnetic anomaly at the down dip, along strike projection of the mineralised magmatic-hydrothermal breccia and forms a compelling follow up 'porphyry-core' drill target.'
Follow up drilling of this target will be conducted alongside drilling activity at the Spur Gold Corridor where a large epithermal system is being defined with similarities to sections of the Cadia Valley project, which hosts 50Moz of gold and 9.5Mt of copper.
Spur is hosted in equivalent Late Ordovician aged geology of the Molong Belt within the wider Lachlan Fold Belt.
Brightstar Resources (ASX:BTR)
On the back of a run of positive news from its Sandstone Hub gold project in WA, Brightstar Resources has moved forward by 8.34% to 52c.
The gold potential at the 1.5Moz for 1.5g/t Sandstone project has been enhanced with more high-grade results from RC drilling at the Lord Nelson, Havilah and Bull Oak deposits.
This drilling is part of BTR's 2025 exploration strategy to aggressively drill out the historically underexplored project, targeting a resource upgrade in 2H 2025 including maiden ore reserves to support a pre-feasibility study.
The latest ~3,800m RC drilling program at Lord Nelson was aimed at infilling inside the conceptual pit shell to upgrade the resource classification to indicated.
Best assays from Lord Nelson include:
32m at 3.44g/t gold from 200m, including 17m at 5.44g/t from 215m;
18m at 2.50g/t from 236m, including 1m at 13.9g/t from 237m; and
10m at 2.94g/t from 214m, including 2m at 5.79g/t from 221m.
Results from a 6-hole, 730m program at Havilah deposit include 3m at 11.4g/t gold from 129m, including 1m at 29.5g/t from 131m and confirm that the high-grade mineralisation remains open down-plunge for further follow up targeting resource growth.
Results from Bull Oak deposit include:
19m at 1.18g/t gold from 177m, including 1m at 10.1g/t from 192m, within a broader, unconstrained intercept of 106m at 0.6g/t from 134m; and
2m at 8.93g/t from 112m, including 1m at 13.7g/t from 112m, within a broader, unconstrained intercept of 167m at 0.59g/t from 11m.
Brightstar Resources (ASX:BTR) aims to get the project into production asap, with first gold anticipated as soon as 2028.
Drilling continues with an RC rig in action at the Indomitable Camp in Sandstone and results pending from a ~6,000m program at the Yunndaga deposit (Menzies Hub), completed by a second rig.
Koonenberry Gold (ASX:KNB)
Koonenberry Gold remains in demand after last week making it six-for-six with visible gold during initial diamond drilling at its Enmore project in northeast New South Wales.
With the sixth diamond hole in the program again returning visible gold, the company has risen another 22.4% to a daily high of 9.3c on volume of more than 48 million. This represents a new high of more than two years.
The hole demonstrates that mineralisation extends from surface to 300m vertically, 80m laterally and 40m along strike of the zone reported in assays from the third hole.
While assays from the fourth, fifth and sixth holes are upcoming, the highest grade assay to date is 5m at 11.7g/t gold in the second hole.
Despite the project's location in the New England Fold Belt, which has an endowment of more than 35 million ounces of gold …. Enmore remains relatively unexplored.
Enmore is only about 25km from the 1.7Moz Hillgrove gold and antimony mine.
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More than 3000 people will flock to the town, swelling its population more than 10 per cent. At Wednesday's gala night more than 1300 attendees will be catered for and a plane-load of staff flown in to serve them, given the limited staff and facilities in Kalgoorlie. Marquees will be erected to house 154 exhibitors, while 65 presenters will hold court over three days. It's no challenge for forum director Suzanne Christie, who has been organising the tricky logistics of the event from day one, Mr Walker said. Goldminers have long hogged the limelight at the Diggers and Dealers mining forum. The annual conference in the remote mining town of Kalgoorlie, in the Western Australian Goldfields region, is the glittering highlight of the resources industry's events calendar. Up-and-coming miners prize their shot to flaunt their wares to investors, while the majors covet the chance to snag an award at the glitzy gala dinner. In recent years, goldminers have been supplanted at the top of the roster by the battery minerals crowd, buoyed by the burgeoning demand for ores like lithium and nickel essential to the manufacturing of electric vehicles. But a record run has sent the price of bullion soaring and investors flocking back to the precious metal. Amid an upswing in mergers and acquisitions activity among goldminers, the largest has been Northern Star's $5 billion takeover of De Grey Mining. Northern Star's Super Pit dominates the Kalgoorlie landscape. The ASX giant's largest asset is a popular tourist destination, with thousands of visitors drawn to the pit's public lookout each year to watch colossal mining trucks wind their way up the serpentine access track or see scheduled blasts shake the sheer rock walls below. But the De Grey deal handed Northern Star a project that could dwarf the 130-year-old deposit, which has been plagued by productivity and cost headwinds in the past year. The newly-acquired Hemi deposit, in the iron-ore dominated Pilbara region, contains an estimated 11 million ounces of gold. That would fetch more than $55 billion at current prices. The project, which is still seeking regulatory approval, has a slightly lower grade than the Super Pit at 1.3 grams per tonne. But given the ravenous appetite for gold, even much lower grade deposits will attract interest at the Diggers conference. Forum chair Jim Walker says the mood in the industry is upbeat. "Gold's still going very, very well, lithium is coming back up again," he told AAP. "So it's going to be a very positive conference from that point of view." Lithium miners have been buoyed after a recovery in spodumene prices, after a global rout carved more than 90 per cent off the price of the mineral. Prices have climbed 50 per cent since they bottomed out in June, with the stronger-than-expected uptake of electric vehicles now driving speculation lithium production will fall short of soaring demand. But share prices for former market darlings IGO, Pilbara Minerals and Liontown Resources still languish well below the heights of two years ago. While gold presenters now outweigh lithium at the conference, battery minerals producers will still make their presence felt. Now in its 34th year, the forum is just as important to the Kalgoorlie economy as it is for micro-cap explorers looking to get their first project up. More than 3000 people will flock to the town, swelling its population more than 10 per cent. At Wednesday's gala night more than 1300 attendees will be catered for and a plane-load of staff flown in to serve them, given the limited staff and facilities in Kalgoorlie. Marquees will be erected to house 154 exhibitors, while 65 presenters will hold court over three days. It's no challenge for forum director Suzanne Christie, who has been organising the tricky logistics of the event from day one, Mr Walker said. Goldminers have long hogged the limelight at the Diggers and Dealers mining forum. The annual conference in the remote mining town of Kalgoorlie, in the Western Australian Goldfields region, is the glittering highlight of the resources industry's events calendar. Up-and-coming miners prize their shot to flaunt their wares to investors, while the majors covet the chance to snag an award at the glitzy gala dinner. In recent years, goldminers have been supplanted at the top of the roster by the battery minerals crowd, buoyed by the burgeoning demand for ores like lithium and nickel essential to the manufacturing of electric vehicles. But a record run has sent the price of bullion soaring and investors flocking back to the precious metal. Amid an upswing in mergers and acquisitions activity among goldminers, the largest has been Northern Star's $5 billion takeover of De Grey Mining. Northern Star's Super Pit dominates the Kalgoorlie landscape. The ASX giant's largest asset is a popular tourist destination, with thousands of visitors drawn to the pit's public lookout each year to watch colossal mining trucks wind their way up the serpentine access track or see scheduled blasts shake the sheer rock walls below. But the De Grey deal handed Northern Star a project that could dwarf the 130-year-old deposit, which has been plagued by productivity and cost headwinds in the past year. The newly-acquired Hemi deposit, in the iron-ore dominated Pilbara region, contains an estimated 11 million ounces of gold. That would fetch more than $55 billion at current prices. The project, which is still seeking regulatory approval, has a slightly lower grade than the Super Pit at 1.3 grams per tonne. But given the ravenous appetite for gold, even much lower grade deposits will attract interest at the Diggers conference. Forum chair Jim Walker says the mood in the industry is upbeat. "Gold's still going very, very well, lithium is coming back up again," he told AAP. "So it's going to be a very positive conference from that point of view." Lithium miners have been buoyed after a recovery in spodumene prices, after a global rout carved more than 90 per cent off the price of the mineral. Prices have climbed 50 per cent since they bottomed out in June, with the stronger-than-expected uptake of electric vehicles now driving speculation lithium production will fall short of soaring demand. But share prices for former market darlings IGO, Pilbara Minerals and Liontown Resources still languish well below the heights of two years ago. While gold presenters now outweigh lithium at the conference, battery minerals producers will still make their presence felt. Now in its 34th year, the forum is just as important to the Kalgoorlie economy as it is for micro-cap explorers looking to get their first project up. More than 3000 people will flock to the town, swelling its population more than 10 per cent. At Wednesday's gala night more than 1300 attendees will be catered for and a plane-load of staff flown in to serve them, given the limited staff and facilities in Kalgoorlie. Marquees will be erected to house 154 exhibitors, while 65 presenters will hold court over three days. It's no challenge for forum director Suzanne Christie, who has been organising the tricky logistics of the event from day one, Mr Walker said. Goldminers have long hogged the limelight at the Diggers and Dealers mining forum. The annual conference in the remote mining town of Kalgoorlie, in the Western Australian Goldfields region, is the glittering highlight of the resources industry's events calendar. Up-and-coming miners prize their shot to flaunt their wares to investors, while the majors covet the chance to snag an award at the glitzy gala dinner. In recent years, goldminers have been supplanted at the top of the roster by the battery minerals crowd, buoyed by the burgeoning demand for ores like lithium and nickel essential to the manufacturing of electric vehicles. But a record run has sent the price of bullion soaring and investors flocking back to the precious metal. Amid an upswing in mergers and acquisitions activity among goldminers, the largest has been Northern Star's $5 billion takeover of De Grey Mining. Northern Star's Super Pit dominates the Kalgoorlie landscape. The ASX giant's largest asset is a popular tourist destination, with thousands of visitors drawn to the pit's public lookout each year to watch colossal mining trucks wind their way up the serpentine access track or see scheduled blasts shake the sheer rock walls below. But the De Grey deal handed Northern Star a project that could dwarf the 130-year-old deposit, which has been plagued by productivity and cost headwinds in the past year. The newly-acquired Hemi deposit, in the iron-ore dominated Pilbara region, contains an estimated 11 million ounces of gold. That would fetch more than $55 billion at current prices. The project, which is still seeking regulatory approval, has a slightly lower grade than the Super Pit at 1.3 grams per tonne. But given the ravenous appetite for gold, even much lower grade deposits will attract interest at the Diggers conference. Forum chair Jim Walker says the mood in the industry is upbeat. "Gold's still going very, very well, lithium is coming back up again," he told AAP. "So it's going to be a very positive conference from that point of view." Lithium miners have been buoyed after a recovery in spodumene prices, after a global rout carved more than 90 per cent off the price of the mineral. Prices have climbed 50 per cent since they bottomed out in June, with the stronger-than-expected uptake of electric vehicles now driving speculation lithium production will fall short of soaring demand. But share prices for former market darlings IGO, Pilbara Minerals and Liontown Resources still languish well below the heights of two years ago. While gold presenters now outweigh lithium at the conference, battery minerals producers will still make their presence felt. Now in its 34th year, the forum is just as important to the Kalgoorlie economy as it is for micro-cap explorers looking to get their first project up. More than 3000 people will flock to the town, swelling its population more than 10 per cent. At Wednesday's gala night more than 1300 attendees will be catered for and a plane-load of staff flown in to serve them, given the limited staff and facilities in Kalgoorlie. Marquees will be erected to house 154 exhibitors, while 65 presenters will hold court over three days. It's no challenge for forum director Suzanne Christie, who has been organising the tricky logistics of the event from day one, Mr Walker said.
