Resources Top 5: Summit gains on Brazilian niobium, REE acquisition

Summit Minerals led resource gainers on Monday after signing a deal to acquire the Mundo Novo niobium and rare earths project in central Brazil.

Summit Minerals was the top resources gainer in the morning after moving to acquire a Brazilian niobium-REE project. Pic: Getty Images

• Summit Minerals is carrying out due diligence prior to acquiring advanced Mundo Novo REE/niobium project, SUM share price gains 33%

• It's a slow news day in ressie land otherwise, but…

• PNT, TG6, CRI and SVY all make solid gains

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in morning trade, Monday, January 6. Prices accurate at time of writing.

Summit Minerals (ASX:SUM)

Leading the pack today is Summit Minerals which has executed an agreement to acquire the advanced Mundo Novo niobium and rare earths project in central Brazil.

The project has proven ionic adsorption clay-hosted REE, niobium and phosphate-rich oxide mineralisation from surface with multiple zones offering multi-commodity exposure.

Limited shallow drilling to date has returned assays from surface such as 51m grading 10,000 parts per million total rare earth oxides, 15m at 12,200ppm TREO and 20m at 12,100ppm TREO.

Many holes have ended in mineralisation and remain open.

Drilling has also intersected high-grade niobium with an assay of 9m at 1.23% Nb2O5 from 2m including 4m at 1.62% Nb2O5.

Initial studies by the company have indicated that it is an IAC-style REE deposit similar to Meteoric Resources’ (ASX:MEI) Poços de Caldas alkaline cabonatite complex while its niobium potential mirrors that of the Morro Preto deposit in the Catalão Complex.

Panther Metals (ASX:PNT) and TG Metals (ASX:TG6)

Up on no news

While Panther had no news today, it had noted in mid-December 2024 that it had identified significant gold anomalism and continuity along the 6km Comet Well prospect area structure at its Laverton gold project.

Drilling had returned intercepts such as 1m at 3.2g/t gold from 19m.

Adding interest, further gold nuggets were discovered 2.5km southeast of Comet Well.

Meanwhile, TG Metals reported in December 2024 that its initial flotation testwork on the fines component of samples from its Burmeister deposit achieved excellent results that improved overall lithium recovery to between 75.5% and 80.2%.

The company had previously used ore sorting technology to reject the bulk of the iron content along with heavy liquid separation to produce a high-grade, low-impurity spodumene concentrate grading up to 6.31% Li2O, well above the 6% Li2O benchmark on which the commodity is priced.

Burmeister sits within the company’s Lake Johnston project in WA north of Esperance.

Its namesake greenstone belt contains lithium from hard rock sources in the form of spodumene-bearing pegmatites, something TG6 has found in abundance.

Critica (ASX:CRI) and Stavely Minerals (ASX:SVY)

Up on no news

Also up on no news is Critica, which announced on December 19, 2024, that it was advancing work on the maiden resource estimate for its high-grade Jupiter project, which is in turn part of the Brothers clay-hosted rare earths project in WA.

This work is expected to be completed and released by mid-February 2025.

In parallel, initial results from metallurgical testwork are expected during the current quarter.

SVY is making waves again just after drawing a speeding ticket from the ASX on Friday, January 3.

The company said in its response that it wasn’t aware of any reason for the price increase and high trading volumes other than general market interest over upcoming assays from the Junction porphyry.

In late November 2024, SVY had made a high-grade discovery at Junction when drilling returned assays of up to 14m at 3.24% copper and 34.5g/t silver from 34m.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Summit Minerals and TG Metals are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.

Originally published as Resources Top 5: Summit gains on Brazilian niobium, REE acquisition