In the race to supply critical metals to the USA, Guardian Metal Resources is leading the way with a cluster of projects.
“…with growing political pressures impacting the critical minerals supply chain, GMET appears to be in a particularly strong position to capitalise on this crucial sector highway…”
Market favourite Guardian Metal Resources (AIM:GMET, OTCQB: GMTLF), up by more than 180pc since listing in May last year, continues to soar as it proves up the value of a cluster of Nevada-based projects prospective for the critical metals tungsten, gold, lithium, copper and silver.
Since TMS last covered GMET, noted as one of 20 mining companies to watch in 2024, the company has changed its name from Golden Metal Resources to Guardian Metal Resources, reflecting its increasing confidence in ‘the significance of the Company’s projects to the supply of critical metals to the USA with numerous key defence, industrial and energy applications’.
GMET listed last May with five projects. The company’s flagship Pilot Mountain Project, believed to be the largest undeveloped tungsten prospect on US soil, is an advanced stage exploration and mineral resource definition stage project located in Mineral County in western Nevada, well situated for the supply of power, water and skilled labour and transport infrastructure. Pilot Mountain is focused on four existing mineral deposits, Garnet, Good Hope, Gunmetal and Desert Scheelite, all of which possess significant skarn-style tungsten-copper-silver-zinc mineralisation from surface.
GMET’s other headline project, Garfield, is a copper-gold-silver prospect consisting of 65 lode mining claims covering 5.4 km2, also located in Mineral County. The Kibby Basin Lithium Project, close to Pilot Mountain, covers two claim packages prospective for lithium brine mineralisation. The project’s southern claim package is less than 250 metres from a 2022 drillhole which returned a significant 169 metre interval of lithium brine determined to be open in all directions. The Golconda Summit Project, an exploration stage carlin-type gold and silver prospect, situated at the confluence of Nevada’s Getchell and Battle Mountain-Eureka metallogenic trends, consists of 44 lode mining claims, covering 3.22 km2. Stonewall, an exploration stage gold-silver property prospective for epithermal gold-silver mineralisation, consists of 19 lode mining claims covering 1.59 km2 located on the northern flank of Stonewall Mountain, close to the historic gold mining town of Goldfield.
‘Highly significant’ tungsten mineralisation at Pilot Mountain
GMET’s value has surged by nearly 60pc over the past six months as the potential of Pilot Mountain and Garfield has become clearer.
Geophysics work in early summer identified two significant magnetic high anomalies within Pilot Mountain’s Porphyry South target area, one extending some 500 by 750 metres. Modelling indicated ‘a large buried magnetic body at depth’, with extensive tungsten, copper, silver and zinc skarn-type mineralisation found at surface related to a buried causative porphyry system, prompting GMET to stake 12 further claims, around the Porphyry South prospect and ground to the east of the prospect.
The company got Pilot’s first diamond drilling programme underway in May, the opening phase scheduling at least 2,000 metres of drilling, which has already been signficantly expanded. GMET CEO Oliver Friesen described the programme’s goal as ‘two-fold, 1) grow our confidence and increase the size of the resource at the Project’s main Desert Scheelite zone, which currently hosts the largest known tungsten resource on USA soil, and 2) make new brownfield discoveries to materially grow the amount of contained metal known about within the Project at present.’
By June GMET was able to report that two diameter diamond core drill holes had been completed for a total combined 547.6 metres. Drillhole PM24-001, drilled near the central portion of the project’s Desert Scheelite zone, testing for extensions of the deposit to the north and south, intersected observed scheelite (tungsten) mineralisation and skarn alteration from 12.2 to 42.8 and 65 to 151.8 metres. Drillhole PM24-002, the first hole ever drilled into the Porphyry South magnetic anomaly, completed to a final depth of 407.1 metres, discovered a mineralised porphyry system and intersected a quartz monzonite porphyry from immediately below overburden at 22 metres depth through to the final hole depth of 407.1 metres.
The following month, an extensive review of the project’s geology, encompassing drill core from hole PM24-002, yielded ‘significant results’ indicating that the porphyry system architecture at Pilot Mountain ‘could be much larger than original expectations’. Previously unidentified levels of a mineralised porphyry system were mapped within various fault blocks across the Pilot Mountain property, including phyllic and potassic alteration zones, and new copper shows at surface were identified across the Porphyry South target area. The findings prompted the staking of an additional 16 claims ‘to secure the now expanded and mapped hydrothermal footprint associated with the Porphyry South target.’
GMET went on to report that 17 core diameter diamond drillholes had been completed for a total combined 2,396.2 metres, extending the original programme. Preliminary findings from the latest holes drilled included an altered skarn/marble zone intersected in drillhole PM24-03 at Desert Scheelite Parallel West, and successful interception from drillhole PM 24-05, designed to test the zone further along strike and down dip.
Last month GMET reported that inversion modelling of magnetic geophysical data over the prospect’s Porphyry West target had ‘delineated a magnetic anomaly which is significantly larger’ than the anomaly constituting the Porphyry South, the original porphyry target identified at Pilot Mountain. Modelling had also identified an additional significant magnetic anomaly, North Target, constituting a new target area.
The company was also able to report Pilot’s first diamond core drillhole assay results, confirming that diamond core drillhole PM24-001 from the Desert Scheelite deposit intersected three zones of highly significant tungsten mineralisation together with ancillary zinc, silver and copper. PM24-001 high-grade downhole drill intersection composites comprised 9 metres at 0.37pc tungsten trioxide from 69.1 metres (with 2.48pc zinc, 43.7 g/t silver, and 433 ppm copper), 27.9 metres at 0.42pc tungsten trioxide from 96.6 metres (with 1.30pc zinc, 23.1 g/t silver, and 1,245 ppm copper), and 1.8 metres at 0.42pc tungsten trioxide from 150 metres to end of hole (with 1.44pc zinc, 7.6 g/t silver, and 217 ppm copper).
Individual standout very high-grade assay results included 1.37pc tungsten trioxide (108.7 to 110.2 metres downhole depth) and 1.44pc tungsten trioxide (114 to 115.5 metres downhole depth), which were announced as ‘some of the highest ever single drill assay results achieved across Pilot Mountain to date’. Core sample assay results returned upper limit of detection results for 20 tungsten samples at more than 3,000 ppm, and 15 zinc results at more than 10,000 ppm, three silver results at more than 100 g/t, and one lead result of more than 10,000 ppm. The company believed all three of the strongly mineralised zones within PM24-001 to be near surface. It has decided to selectively assay PM24-001 for gold, and has identified strong visual garnet mineralisation intersected throughout the drillhole’s mineralised skarn-interval. GMET believes industrial garnet comprises an average of 40pc of many mineralised intervals across the known deposit areas.
Looking back on the programme to date, Mr Friesen said: ‘Guardian Metal could not have asked for a better start to the Pilot Mountain drilling programme with the significant assay results achieved in the first drill hole PM24-001. The results demonstrate three distinct strongly mineralised tungsten-silver-zinc-copper intervals with the deepest interval remaining open at depth … The coming weeks and months will undoubtedly be the busiest period for Guardian Metal to date and we are looking forward to providing the market with commercial/technical updates, including further assay data and interpretation, as results continue to flow in from the laboratory.’
‘A mineralised porphyry system’ at Garfield
While defining Pilot Mountain GMET has also undertaken intensive exploration at the Garfield Project.
A ground magnetic geophysics survey undertaken early in the year delineated three significant magnetic high anomalies in proximity to surface mineralisation, two located within the project’s High-Grade zone, and one magnetic anomaly located within the southwestern part of its Power-Line zone. Analysis indicated ‘they are likely related to large buried magnetic bodies at depth’, providing support for the company’s belief that the significant copper-gold-silver mineralisation found at surface within the two zones is related to a buried copper porphyry system.
Inversion results published in June confirmed multiple ‘Magnetic Bullseye’ geophysics anomalies, often associated with intrusive porphyry centres, beneath the project’s High-Grade and Power Line Zones, prompting the company to stake 44 new claims, increasing the project’s size by two-thirds to 9.18 km2.
Last month rock sampling across the new area, which it has labelled the Freeze Zone, returned ‘exceptional and consistent high-grade copper-gold-silver results’, including up to 15.56pc and 9.58pc copper equivalent, with seven of the eight samples returning more than 1.75pc copper equivalent. The ground magnetic geophysics survey completed over the zone highlighted a buried magnetic anomaly proximal to the high-grade rock sample results, ‘pointing to the potential for the Freeze Zone to host a mineralised porphyry system’.
Postulating that the additional porphyry target indicated that ‘multiple mineralised porphyry centres may exist across the Project’, GMET stated four main named target zones, Power-Line, High-Grade, Pamlico and Freeze, with varying porphyry, skarn- and epithermal affinity. The company is finalising preferred drill target locations, with permits to be submitted to regulators shortly.
The race for tungsten
GMET’s progress comes as the geopolitical battle for critical metals continues to intensify, the US and China marshalling export controls, tariffs and blacklisting to secure bedrock materials for semiconductors and green technology. With China currently producing some 86pc of the world’s global tungsten supply, the US has listed the metal as critical for use in defence and other industrial applications.
GMET highlights in particular a US Senate Committee on Armed Services report published in July calling on the federal government ‘to ensure that the domestic source of antimony and tungsten supply chains are not limited to a single source’ in light of Chinese and Russian domination of the global tungsten and antimony supply chains, and the chain’s stability during renewed warfare in Europe.
The company is also co-funding a research project with Oxford Sigma, a UK-based nuclear fusion technology ‘to quantify the use of tungsten and other critical metals within the fusion process’. The partners expect the Project will highlight ‘the extraordinary future demand the development of nuclear fusion would create for tungsten’.
Outlook
GMET raised £2,154,074.58 ($2.75m) in August in support of ongoing development at Pilot Mountain and Garfield, a financing the company hopes has ‘the potential to significantly increase North American investor interest in the Company’ through its listing on the OTCQB Venture Market (OTCQB:GMTLF). The company’s interim results for the six months to 31 December 2023 reported a loss for the period of $571,000, total assets of $8,902,000, and net assets of $8,663,000. Keen to secure non-dilutive funds, the company is engaging with the US government regarding the possibility of securing federal funding for the accelerated development of Pilot Mountain
GMET has continued to attract investor support, rising 180pc since IPO and more than doubling over the past six months, taking the company’s price to 23p and its market cap to £30.9m at the time of writing. As political pressures weigh ever more heavily on the critical minerals supply chain, GMET, with money in the bank funding an exploration/development programme that continues to gain momentum, seems particularly well positioned to continue to consolidate its increasingly strong market position. The share peaked above 35p as recently as late August – now may be the time to take a look in anticipation of further price catalysts.
To view the latest Guardian Metal Resources corporate presentation click here
