Mining Insights: four small-cap critical minerals shares

At this year’s mining investment event in Cape Town, we caught up with UK-listed mining companies finding metals needed to develop the latest technology. Among them is a development in the ‘Champions League’ of global lithium projects, one with an exciting low-cost rare earth asset, and another in a great position to exploit the current bull market.

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Emanuel Proenca, CEO, Savannah Resources:Savannah Resources (LSE:SAV) is a lithium developer, so we have a lithium resource in northern Portugal that we’re developing. It’s Europe’s largest spodumene resource and the second-most prepared to start construction. We’ll start construction towards the later end of this year.

Size-wise, you’re talking about a project that, with time, can go up to a 100 million tons of resource, which puts it in the ‘Champions League’ of the lithium projects in the world.

It is also a very competitive project because the resource is shallow and it can be mined with minimal local impact and with maximal value. So, it is probably one of the cornerstone elements for the lithium and battery value chain of Europe for the coming years.

This is obviously exciting times for us, and it is exciting times that are being supported by a stronger and stronger investor base together with Portuguese and European support.

Only last month we signed an agreement with the Portuguese state that includes a funding package, a grant, of up to 110 million euros (£95 million) of direct support to the development of the project, which is massive.

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Rupert Verco, CEO, Cobra Resources:Cobra Resources Ordinary Shares (LSE:COBR) is a UK-listed main market explorer and developer. We’re focused on South Australia as a tier one mining jurisdiction. We have a scalable copper asset where historic drilling has delivered some phenomenal grades, broad intersections, very shallow. And we’ve just completed a significant drill programme.

We have a rare earth asset that we believe can be one of the lowest-cost producing assets outside China and we can do that through a very sustainable form of mining that is aquifer controlled in situ recovery. 

We’ve taken a slightly different approach in terms of conventional development of an exploration discovery. Rare earths is very challenging industry and most rare earth projects come unstuck in metallurgy and the cost of production.

So, what we’ve focused on up front is metallurgy, developing our flow sheet, optimising our flow sheet to produce a very marketable, heavy rare earth product. We’ve also focused on the hydrology of in-situ recovery to demonstrate a very low C1 cost basis for the production of rare earths.

We’ve amassed a massive landholding of over 3,200 square kilometres of this perspective geology. We’re really excited about what it presents. We want to do what National Atomic Co Kazatomprom JSC ADR (LSE:KAP) did in the early 2000s, they grew from a 5% global share of production of uranium to within, seven years, almost 40% of the market.

Anthony Viljoen, CEO, Andrada Mining: It’s been a great run for Andrada Mining Ltd Ordinary Shares (LSE:ATM). We’re obviously in the beautiful city of Cape Town here at the Mining Indaba. But what we started out with at Andrada seven years ago, the strategy’s slowly starting to come into fruition. The portfolio is looking really spicy and fully financed, making cash.

So, we’re in a good position to take advantage of a bull market. We hit all-time highs in the tin price. So, all of those fundamentals that we’ve been watching develop are now coming into play in the tin market and it just so happens that we are increasing our production this year, so we really are well positioned to take advantage of that. 

We had this idea of consolidating historic mining assets within Namibia, and you would have seen the news flow recently. We’ve got a very exciting partnership with SQM at Lithium Ridge. We’ve had some great draw results come out this week, and then we’ve recently announced a partnership with Brandberg West, which is a tin, tungsten and copper deposit, also quite close to where we are, an old goldfields asset, and we’ve just announced a partnership on that.

It’s an exciting year because all these commodities are your critical minerals and we’re in the bull market, so Andrada is very well positioned to take advantage of all this.

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Bernard Aylward, CEO, Kodal Minerals: Kodal is partner in the development of the Bougouni lithium mine and the biggest thing that we’ve done most recently is commenced export of our spodumene concentrate to China.

Our second shipment has recently left the San Pedro port and we’re very fortunate that we are now in a high-priced lithium environment, and we expect to see good revenue for the product we’re selling.

So, Kodal Minerals (LSE:KOD) has been involved in the Bougouni project for a long time.We’re very pleased to have taken it from exploration to now export and receipt of funds from sale, but also Kodal is well funded and focusing on acquiring other projects.

So, for the further development of the Bougouni project, obviously we have the DMS (dense medium separation) stage one plant up and running. Currently, we are looking to produce 120,000 ton of concentrate a year, and this year we’re going to have a particular focus on the delineation ofresource and expansion of the resource base to support the stage two development, floatation plant. 

We expect to complete an updated feasibility this year, looking to make an investment decision at the end of this year, or early next year. Commencement of building probably in 2027, 2028.