Resources Rising Stars: Resources stocks stand strong amid market chaos

Resources stocks showed few signs of weakness at this years Resources Rising Stars Gather round conference amid market turmoil.

Resources juniors showed their wares to investors at this year's Gather Round conference. Pic: Getty Images

• Resources Rising Stars Gather Round event delivers stellar line up of companies across a variety of resources 

• Yesterday's big gainer Arika Resources and copper miner Hillgrove Resources were among some of the stocks on show

• Tin and uranium explorers featured too 

In the midst of chaos there is also opportunity, and there was plenty of that at Resources Rising Stars' second annual Gather Round event in Adelaide yesterday.

As global markets surged in response to Trump’s 90-day tariff pause, lifting commodity prices and sending company valuations higher, over 30 ASX companies congregated at the Adelaide Convention Centre to deliver insights into imminent plans at their respective projects.

Junior and mid-tier companies alike shared their stories throughout the one-day mining convention, which saw more than 400 investor registrations.

Gold and copper shine bright

Gold and copper stocks featured prominently with Arika Resources (ASX:ARI) benefiting from gold’s price bounce above the US$3000/oz mark as its share price gained 56% following the delivery of fresh gold hits at the Pennyweight Point prospect.

Pennyweight Point is part of the wider Yundamindra asset in WA, surrounded by historical gold deposits and workings such as the 8Moz Sunrise Dam and 7Moz Wallaby mine.

The RRS first timer also owns the Kookynie gold project including the famed Cosmopolitan mine, which historically produced 300,000oz at a grade of over 20g/t.

Arika’s new drilling results confirmed a significant high-grade gold system at Pennyweight Point, as well as a strike length of more than 350m and a depth of at least 200m below the surface.

ARI managing director Justin Barton told conference goers the next six to 12 months would be a busy period for the company, with more methodological drilling to take place at Yundamindra.

While the scale potential of Pennyweight Point is emerging rapidly, he said it is highly likely that the prospect may not be the most important down the track, with less than 1% of the currently identified structures drill tested.

“There is a lot of opportunity across the project, and we still don’t know where the centre of gravity is,” he said.

Copper producer Hillgrove Resources (ASX:HGO) owns the Kanmantoo copper mine in South Australia, with a vision to become a mid tier, multi-asset Australian producer.

The project boasts a resource of 19.3Mt grading 0.77% copper and 0.14g/t gold and comes with infrastructure in place including a 3.6Mtpa processing plant and a tailings storage facility with 6Mt of permitted capacity.

The addition of Nugent is expected to lift Kanmantoo’s mining rate by 25%, growing from 1.4Mtpa to a targeted rate of 1.8Mtpa in the first half of 2026.

And there’s more potential to be discovered with ~60,000m of drilling planned this year as well as a greenfields exploration campaign across its prospective Kanappa and South East tenements.

Uranium and tin too

Greenvale Energy (ASX:GRV) Neil Biddle, known for his role in the establishment and early development of lithium giant Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS), painted a picture of uranium’s current state of play in global markets.

He said while Australia contains one third of the world’s uranium reserves, the general public here are unaware of the global significance of the market.

That’s despite there being around 440 nuclear reactors in 32 countries producing 9% of global energy requirements and consuming 150mlbs U3O8 per annum.

Another 65 reactors are currently under construction and will consume an additional 23Mlbs per annum.

Greenvale recently repositioned its portfolio following the acquisition of uranium assets in the Northern Territory (Henbury, Tobermorey, Douglas River and Jindare) and Queensland (Oasis).

The company is planning to begin maiden drilling on the Oasis asset in April to establish an initial JORC resource.

Sky Metals (ASX:SKY) is one of a handful of tin explorers on the ASX with its Tallebung project in NSW.

Tin is an electrification metal with a shaky supply line thanks to the recent mine shuts in the DRC, which led to the loss of more than 5% of the world’s tin production. While Alphamin was able to restart the Bisie mine in recent days, sending tin prices back to Earth, the long-term dynamics of supply and demand are weighted in favour of producers.

There are few reliable and ethical sources of the metal, with Sky Metals planning to bring what was once a significant alluvial and hard rock tin mining field in the mid-1980s back into production.

The site has considerable infrastructure in place, including powerlines and haul roads.

Sky is looking to set a revised resource estimate on the project shortly, which will underpin a mining study by mid year.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Arika Resources, Hillgrove Resources and Greenvale Energy are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.

Originally published as Resources Rising Stars: Resources stocks stand strong amid market chaos