Drilling at Southern Cross Gold’s (TSX: SXGC; ASX: SX2; US-OTC: SXGCF) Sunday Creek project in Australia returned the strongest gold-antimony result yet at the Apollo target. Shares rose.
Highlight hole SDDSC200 cut 17.3 metres grading 15.3 grams gold per tonne and 3.2% stibnite – which hosts antimony – from 251.1 metres depth, including 6.3 metres at 32.3 grams gold and 7% stibnite. Sunday Creek is about 60 km north of Melbourne.
“The [result] in SDDSC200 is the best composite we’ve ever recorded in the top portion of Apollo and is in an area we had not previously drilled. That’s not infill – that’s discovery,” Southern Cross CEO Michael Hudson said in a release on Monday.
“The antimony story here is equally compelling. Multiple intervals exceeded 20% antimony – very high concentrations that reflect the epizonal character of Sunday Creek and the natural enrichment of antimony in the upper portions of the system.”
Southern Cross shares gained 8% to $9.49 apiece on Monday morning in Toronto, valuing the company at $2.47 billion. The stock has traded in a 12-month range of $4.61 to $11.75.
Leading Australian project
Sunday Creek, among just a handful of antimony projects in Australia, stands out for its high grades of the critical metal. Antimony is essential for applications in alloys and defence technologies but global production and processing is mostly controlled by China. Sunday Creek is about 55 km southeast of Alkane Resources’ (ASX, TSX: ALK) Costerfield mine, the largest antimony-producing site in the Western world.
Washington is spending millions to help advance projects such as Perpetua Resources (Nasdaq: PPTA) Stibnite in Idaho, while United States Antimony (NYSE: UAMY) operates processing facilities in Montana and Mexico.
China Minmetals has idled Canada’s sole antimony mine, the Beaver Brook site in Newfoundland, despite the metal’s rising importance and concerns Beijing uses dormant mines like Beaver Brook to control access to antimony and prices. In the same region, New Brunswick is preparing to grant rights this year to restart the Lake George antimony mine which Hecla Mining (NYSE: HL) closed in 1996 while Antimony Resources (CSE: ATMY; US-OTC: ATMYF) drills the company’s Bald Hill project nearby.
The metal has been in a persistent deficit for several years due to falling ore grades, slowing Chinese mine investment and high demand from the solar sector, BMO Capital Markets analysts Helen Amos and George Heppel wrote in a note on Monday.
The antimony price, currently at about $50 per kg in North America, spiked fourfold after China set export controls in 2024, leading to a western shortage of the metal.
Multiple veins intersected
Other noteworthy intersections in Apollo included hole SDDSC195 that cut across five vein sets and its best intercept was 10.3 metres at 7.9 grams gold and 0.4% stibnite from 137 metres depth.
Hole SDDSC199 pierced eight vein sets, with the best booking 17.9 metres grading 5 grams gold and 1.4% stibnite from 210.4 metres depth, including 4.4 metres at 18.2 grams gold and 5.3% stibnite from 213.2 metres downhole.
The results are from 114,806 metres drilled across 247 holes at Sunday Creek since 2020, the company said. Results from 46 holes are pending, with nine drill rigs active. Southern Cross’s 200,000-metre program is expected to continue until the first quarter of 2027.
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