Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits takes a look at notable drill intercepts reported to the ASX last week, led by Haranga Resources and followed by NexGen Energy and GreenTech Metals, with results spanning gold, uranium and platinum group elements.
Haranga Resources (ASX: HAR)
Project: Lincoln Gold Project, California, USA.
Hit: 4.8m assaying 25.4g/t gold, including 2.4m going 48.84g/t gold.
Haranga Resources has grabbed this week’s Big Hits gold crown after unveiling bonanza-grade results from diamond drilling at its Lincoln gold project in California’s historic Mother Lode gold belt.
The company’s standout intercept, drilled from an underground access, ran 4.8 metres grading 25.4 grams per tonne (g/t), including 2.4m at 48.84g/t, pointing to a thick, coherent high-grade shoot within a broader mineralised structure.
A second hole on an adjacent section, 175m along the main strike of the gold lodes to the southeast, also delivered a strong zone of 2.4m at 38.01g/t gold, including 1m going an eye-watering 63.8g/t gold, reinforcing the view that the high-grade mineralisation being encountered more widely is repeatable and not simply a one-off spike.
To further emphasise that view, that second hole also delivered a separate 3-metre run assaying 15.35g/t gold from 56m, including 1m going 40.6g/t gold.
Importantly for any future development narrative, the majority of high-grade intercepts in the current suite of results sit generally between the 280m and 345mRL (reduced level), that is, within a vertical depth range of 65m.
The actual depth below surface of those hits varies due to the undulating natural surface topography, but by using a mean surface of 450mRL, the results mainly fall between 105m and 170m vertical depth below surface.
The campaign represents the first diamond drilling on the company’s Lincoln-Comet deposits in more than 12 years. The program has delivered multiple high-grade intercepts, which will further support the company’s upcoming maiden JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate and offer useful guidance towards identifying lode repetition.
The current non-JORC compliant NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate for Haranga’s Lincoln-Comet and Medean deposits stands at 958,910 tonnes at an impressive 9.29g/t for an estimated 286,000 ounces of gold at a 4.2g/t cut-off grade.
Haranga’s latest high-grade results are expected to support the conversion of that NI-43-01 resource to a JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate, slated for mid-May.
The 3250m diamond drilling program is now almost complete, with assays for all but four holes expected this week.
While Haranga is still in its early days at Lincoln, the latest intercepts highlight a robust high-grade gold system. It now has a clear line of sight to chase the mineralisation further along strike and down-dip to explore its continuity, grade persistence, potential thicknesses and overall scale.
The company is expecting to deliver a strong news flow in the months ahead, including assays from the remaining four holes on one of the cross sections at Lincoln-Comet, expected this week, followed by a JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate for Lincoln-Comet and the adjacent Medean lode in mid-May.
The Medean lode and Lincoln-Comet zones are part of the same broader "Lincoln-Comet system" that has been tested down to depths of just 150m despite historical production in the area extending to more than 1000m.
The company expects to define an exploration target at Medean by mid-May. Meanwhile, other resource growth opportunities are expected to arise from additional deep, targeted drilling in July, with further exploration targets expected to come through in the second half of the year.
If follow-up drilling continues to reproduce similar grades and thicknesses in the current gold price climate, Haranga’s California play could quickly shift from not just a promising concept but to a legitimate, large-scale and seriously high-grade resource story.
NexGen Energy’s core tray from diamond drill hole with grades shown as uranium oxide per cent. The hole returned 13m at 5.2 per cent uranium oxide, including 0.5 m at 30.2 per cent uranium oxide.
NexGen Energy (ASX: NXG)
Project: Patterson Corridor East uranium discovery, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Hit: 13m at 5.2% uranium oxide, including 0.5m at 30.2% uranium oxide.
NexGen Energy has fired a big uranium reminder into this week’s Big Hits list, unveiling a final batch of 2025 diamond drill core assays from its Patterson Corridor East (PCE) discovery in Saskatchewan’s uranium-endowed Athabasca Basin, where the emerging system continues to draw comparisons with the company’s Arrow deposit.
NexGen’s PCE zone sits on its 100 per cent owned Rook I property, 3.5 kilometres from the company’s Arrow deposit, which underpins the broader Rook I uranium development.
Against that backdrop, the headline result came from one hole that intercepted 13m at 5.2 per cent uranium oxide (as U3O8), including 0.5m at an all-but-glowing 30.2 per cent uranium oxide, confirming that the high-grade subdomain is expanding up-dip.
Another drill intercept, 270m deeper and vertically below the first hole, delivered 10m at 3.95 per cent uranium oxide, including 0.5m at 33.3 per cent oxide, in the down-dip portion of the same high-grade zone.
The two intercepts sit at an estimated 400m and 670m below surface and share strong geological similarities across about 292m of mineralised dip extent, underscoring the system’s depth scale and potential for further depth extension.
A suite of additional holes has also reinforced continuity within the deposit's strong central core. A third hole pierced the same section as the preceding hole but deeper at around 475m depth below surface to deliver 7.5m at 5.32 per cent uranium oxide, including 0.5m at a sizzling 35.9 per cent of the oxide.
This was further reinforced by another hole at a similar depth, which bored through 6m at 2.42 per cent, including 0.5m at 23.4 per cent uranium oxide.
Another relatively shallow hole was driven through the same section at an estimated 375m below surface to deliver 5.5m at 2.34 per cent, including 0.5m at 13.3 per cent uranium oxide, confirming the mineralisation remains thick and strong at depth.
In radiometric terms, the holes cited above returned elevated natural gamma readings, with counts per second (cps) commonly running above 10,000 and, in the standout intervals, exceeding 61,000cps.
Perhaps the most intriguing development has been the program’s confirmation of a new, secondary high-grade subdomain at depth, provided by a hole drilled on the same section but 850m below surface and northeast of all of the earlier holes. The best intercept from this hole returned 4.5m at 4.83 per cent uranium oxide, including 0.5m at 33.3 per cent.
The more remote intercept was drilled 67m up-dip from a previous hit, which produced at least four separate 0.5m intercepts ranging from 2.3 to 6.9 per cent uranium oxide.
Management says the results from its 2025 drilling confirm the high-grade mineralisation. The expanding scale of PCE and the combination of high grades, continuity, scale and geotechnical characteristics continues to highlight similarities between PCE and its mighty Arrow deposit nearby.
NexGen Energy is a Canadian clean energy company. It says its flagship Rook I project is being developed into the largest, low-cost producing uranium mine globally.
With its 2026 exploration drilling campaign already underway and a planned 42,000m campaign set to ramp up again from late May, NexGen looks intent on rapidly building out its PCE footprint as it advances its broader Rook I development strategy.
GreenTech Metals (ASX: GRE)
Project: Munni Munni (Ferguson Reef), Pilbara region, Western Australia.
Hit: 12m at 3.13g/t PGE3, including 2m at 8.37g/t PGE3.
GreenTech Metals rounded out this week’s trio of Big Hits with a shallow, high-grade platinum group element (PGE) intercept from phase one drilling at its Munni Munni project in WA’s Pilbara.
The results provide another strong data point for the company as it tightens up the geology and paves the way for an updated resource story. They also offer validation of historic drilling through twinned drill holes and core resampling.
The standout hit came from Ferguson Reef, where drilling returned 12m at 3.13 grams per tonne (g/t) PGE3 from 90m downhole, including a hefty 2m at 8.37g/t PGE3 from 98m.
Better still, the mineralisation carries meaningful base-metal credits, with the broader intercept also reporting 0.30 per cent copper and 0.17 per cent nickel, which increases to 0.63 per cent copper and 0.34 per cent nickel in the higher-grade core of the body.
PGE3 refers to the combined grade of the three precious metals, platinum, palladium and gold, which is the key grade metric used in the company’s program to characterise platinum group element (PGE) mineralisation at Ferguson Reef.
The project sits on granted mining leases with a historical, 2004 JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate of 23.6 million tonnes at an average grade of 2.9g/t 4E for 2.2 million ounces, where PGE4 refers to platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold.
That resource breaks down into 23.6 million tonnes at 1.1g/t platinum, 1.5g//t palladium, 0.1g/t rhodium and 0.2g/t gold. It also includes 0.15 per cent copper and 0.09 per cent nickel. It was historically defined between 1985 and 2002, using 328 drill holes for a total of 91,077m of drilling.
While PGE intercepts can sometimes be narrow and erratic, GreenTech’s result is notable for its combination of grade, uniformity of thickness and relatively shallow depth, suggesting the reef-style mineralisation could offer both continuity and scale.
The mineralisation lies at the inclined contact between a footwall ultramafic suite of rocks and a hanging-wall gabbro, hosted within a relatively continuous, uniformly thick horizon of websterite, a type of ultramafic igneous rock.
Websterite is commonly found in igneous complexes, such as at the Munni Munni Complex in WA, where it is associated with PGE-enriched sulphides and layered peridotite units.
These units comprise large mantle fragments, sometimes more than 100 square kilometres in area, that have been pushed into continental collision zones over time, effectively providing a rare natural window into processes occurring deep within the Earth’s upper mantle.
The company is refining its interpretation of the Ferguson Reef system using the latest drilling results. This will also support the next stage of resource work, ultimately aiming to lift confidence and define the sort of consistent, high-grade zones that can underpin future mining and processing studies.
The recent drilling and resampling work is expected to feed into an updated mineral resource estimate due in June, once the company has crunched the historical data. For now, the results have been merged into GreenTech’s database while the company gets on with its metallurgical test work.
With shallow, coherent platinum group mineralisation now showing both grade and thickness, GreenTech’s Munni Munni project is shaping up as a quietly compelling resource upgrade story as the company works towards its next JORC estimate.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
