Resources Top 5: Strickland scores a golden egg after Zijin investment

Strickland Metals shone on the last day of a short week after securing a $5m placement to global gold player China’s Zijin Mining at market.

With Easter almost upon us, golden eggs can be handed out to Strickland Metals, Advance Metals, Meteoric Resources, Victory Metals and Sunrise Energy Metals. Pic: Getty Images

• Strategic investment from global gold giant Zijin Mining endorses quality of Strickland’s Rogozna project in Serbia

• Advance Metals soars on “fantastic” gold results from the Myrtleford project 

• Meteoric Resources was up 98.53% from a weekly low of 6.8c to 13.5c

Your standout small cap resources stocks for Thursday, April 17, 2025.

Strickland Metals (ASX:STK)

With the Easter break looming large there are a number of golden eggs to be handed out to strong daily and weekly performers among the ASX-listed junior resource companies.

Daily performers have been Strickland Metals and Advance Metals while weekly advancers have been Meteoric Resources, Victory Metals and Sunrise Energy Metals.

Gold again figures prominently while rare earths, including the by-products of gallium and scandium have come to the fore thanks to China’s export restrictions as part of the tariff battle with the US.

Strickland Metals has been a shining light on the last day of a short week, up almost 21% to 11c after securing a strategic $5m placement to prominent global gold player China's Zijin Mining at market.

This is a big endorsement of the 7.4Moz gold equivalent Rogozna gold and base metals project in Serbia given US$60bn Zijin is one of the biggest operators in-country and the fourth biggest gold miner in the world. 

In Serbia, Zijin operates two world-class mines, the Čukaru Peki and Bor copper and gold mines with combined resources of 34 million tonnes of copper and 29 million ounces of gold. 

In 2024, Zijin’s Serbian operations produced about 300,000 tonnes of copper and 250,000 ounces of gold with expansion work in progress.

Zijin will hold around 2.4% in Strickland following the non-brokered private placement with proceeds to support the company’s expansive ongoing exploration programs.

These include about 20,000m of drilling at Gradina deposit to support a maiden resource estimate, expected to be delivered late 2025, and about 30,000m of resource and discovery-focused drilling across the wider project including at Shanac and Medenovac deposits and the Jezerska Reka, Obradov Potok and Kotlovi prospects.

Funds will also support target generation work for porphyry-hosted copper-gold deposits and scoping study-related work, expected to be completed by late 2025.

As well as Rogozna, the funds also put Strickland in a strong position to continue to execute its growth strategy at the Yandal Gold Project in WA.

“We are delighted to welcome Zijin Mining as a strategic shareholder of Strickland,” managing director Paul L’Herpiniere said. 

“Zijin is one of the world’s largest mining companies and operates substantial copper-gold mines and development assets in Serbia. 

“While Strickland was not seeking to raise equity capital at current share prices, the significant benefits of bringing Zijin onto the Strickland share register far outweigh the small dilutionary impact of this strategic placement.

“Their investment is a strong endorsement of the quality of the 7.4Moz AuEq Rogozna Project in Serbia and the significant progress being made towards our goal of developing a world-class gold-copper operation.

“This strategic placement provides a strong financial platform for Strickland to accelerate its largest-ever exploration program at Rogozna, where six rigs are operating, and continue to actively explore the Yandal Project.”

The Zijin investment has seen Canaccord Genuity Capital Markets give Strickland a ‘Spec buy’ recommendation with a price target of 19c, stating: “STK remains one of our top picks in the exploration space.”

“This is validation of the work STK is doing in Serbia to grow the Rogozna Gold and Base Metals Project; now at a reported 7.4Moz AuEq with six rigs active,” Canaccord’s Paul Howard said.

“We estimate STK to have +A$40m in cash and investments at present; in our view, it didn’t need the cash or dilution from this investment but perhaps wanted the backing and validation from Zijin, and so agreed to the A$5m investment.

“Further afield, Zijin has been very active in backing some of the world's best development companies, in our view. 

“In the past 12-months, Zijin has made strategic investments into Predictive Discovery (ASX:PDI) and Montage Gold Corp, two potential up and comers on the West African gold scene, an area where Zijin is also actively mining.

Advance Metals (ASX:AVM)

Another daily golden egg goes to Advance Metals which has been as much as 60% higher to 5.6c on volume of more than 72 million after returning “fantastic” gold results from the Myrtleford project in northeast Victoria.

The results of up to 446g/t gold have come from AVM’s maiden drilling program at the high-grade project, at which the company recently entered a binding agreement with Serra Energy Metals Corp to acquire an 80% interest via joint venture together with the Beaufort gold project.

Diamond drilling at Happy Valley prospect returned 7.5m at 47.9g/t Au from 178.1m including 1.3m at 271.6g/t and 3.3m at 11.0g/t from 156.5m including 0.55m at 68.1g/t in hole AMD00 while hole AMD002 returned 2.9m at 6.7g/t Au from 208.8m, including 0.5m at 36.6g/t.

Multiple zones of high-grade mineralisation in AMD003, along with peak grades up to 446g/t gold, extend the system to the northwest and present follow-up potential up and down dip.

Diamond drill core from AMD003 showing grains of visible gold hosted within an arsenopyrite vein in milky quartz. This graded 0.7m at 446g/t Au from 179.6m. Image: AVM

These results from the second and third diamond drill holes follow the strong results from the first hole, which returned 8.2 metres at 22.4g/t Au including 3.2 metres at 54.7g/t.

Assay results are also pending for recently completed diamond hole AMD004, which intersected visible gold mineralisation at 231.2 metres and between 250.5-251 metres down hole.

“Once again we are seeing fantastic results returned from the Happy Valley Prospect at Myrtleford,” managing director Adam McKinnon said. 

“In combination with previous drilling and the recent result from AMD001, we have now defined a coherent ultra-high-grade zone with potential extensions in multiple directions. 

“Hole AMD003, in particular, is now one of the best holes ever drilled at Myrtleford with three separate high-grade zones and individual gold assays up 446g/t.

“Further, the initial logging results from hole AMD004 makes it four-from-four for the program in terms of visible gold hits.” 

Drilling has started in the Twist Creek area 45km north-northwest from Happy Valley, testing along strike from previous drill results up to 43g/t Au at the Scandinavia prospect and 40g/t Au at the Victoria prospect.

A program of mapping and rock chip sampling is being completed across multiple targets within the Myrtleford project, with a particular focus along strike from the current drilling at Happy Valley and Twist Creek.

Advance’s technical team is designing a potential follow-up drilling program for the immediate Happy Valley prospect area, with targets to be fully assessed once remaining assays for hole AMD004 and from the rock chip sampling program are received.

Meteoric Resources (ASX:MEI)

A weekly gold egg winner was Meteoric Resources (ASX:MEI), which was up 98.53% from a weekly low of 6.8c to 13.5c, rising another 22.73% on Thursday and with almost 37m shares changing hands on the day.

This move follows the release of a maiden resource estimateon Tuesday for the Bara do Pacu licence at its Caldeira rare earth element ionic clay project in Brazil.

The resource of 389Mt at 2204ppm total rare earth oxides with 432ppm magnet rare earth oxides has reinforced the Tier-1 rare earths status of Caldeira and makes it one of the highest-grade ionic clay rare earth deposits in the world.

It includes 77Mt of indicated resource at 2917ppm TREO with a higher-grade component of 32Mt at 4,130ppm TREO.

This resource takes the overall Caldeira resource to 1.5Bt at 2359ppm TREO and grows the total measured and indicated resources to 666Mt at 2,685 ppm TREO including 22.5% magnet rare earths.

“This resource estimate effectively doubles the indicated resource located within 1,000m of the proposed processing plant site, managing director Stuart Gale said.

“The combined measured and indicated resource for Capão do Mel and Barra do Pacu is in excess of 150Mt at greater than 3,000ppm TREO including greater than 20% MREO. 

“This represents an obvious starter area for future mining at the Caldeira project to drive strong economic returns and a rapid capital payback.”

Sunrise Energy Metals (ASX:SRL)

Riding a scandium wave pushed by export controls from China has been the Robert Friedland-backed Sunrise Energy Metals, improving 143% from last Friday to a weekly high of 73c, reached before a trading halt on Wednesday pending a capital raising.

The lift has come after high-grade assays of the critical mineral scandium were received from the Syerston project in central NSW.

Assays of drill pulps from 1997 that were not previously assayed for scandium returned up to 6m at 553ppm Sc from 4m, including 2m at 760ppm from 8m, and 12m at 458ppm from 12m.

SRL is moving quickly to validate the results with a new drilling campaign being planned to test the step-out targets aimed at expanding the high-grade zones.

This will also provide additional data for input into the updates of the Syerston resource estimate and project feasibility study for the development of a dedicated scandium mine and processing plant at Syerston. 

Syerston’s current resource comprises 60.3Mt at 390ppm Sc for about 23,500 tonnes of contained Sc at a 300ppm Sc cut-off grade, one of the world’s largest and highest-grade scandium deposits.

The company is now updating the 2016 Syerston feasibility study.

Victory Metals (ASX:VTM)

After defining a significant gallium oxide resource at its North Stanmore clay-hosted rare earths project in WA, Victory Metals takes the third weekly golden egg, rising from 38.5c last Friday by 13% to 43.5c.  

Resources at North Stanmore have been updated to 247.5Mt at 520ppm total rare earth oxide plus 26ppm gallium oxide, which translates into 4788t of contained gallium oxide.

This is positive for Victory Metals (ASX:VTM) as the critical mineral used to manufacture semiconductors is priced at $770/kg with the global market projected to grow from US$2.45 billion in 2024 to US$5.38 billion in 2028 and US$21.53 billion in 2034.

A quick calculation places the inground value of the gallium resource at ~$3.69bn though this does not take into account recovery rates and other factors.

It follows on the heels of the company reporting in late March that it had produced gallium in the final mixed rare earth carbonate product from samples collected across the project with no extra processing required.

Taken together, this represents a big bonus as the company does not need to change its mine plans or add another layer to its processing requirements to produce gallium.

North Stanmore has grown its basket of critical metals subject to Chinese export restrictions. Besides the by-product gallium, these are the heavy rare earths of gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium and yttrium, along with light rare earth samarium and by-product scandium.

China controlled 98.4% of global gallium production in 2024, meaning that any alternative source of production will be welcome for those seeking supply security.

While rare earths remain the core revenue driver for the North Stanmore project, chief executive officer Brendan Clark said the addition of gallium to the resource was an incredible bonus.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent financial advice before making any financial decisions. While Meteoric Resources and Victory Metals are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.

Originally published as Resources Top 5: Strickland scores a golden egg after Zijin investment