TSX Venture drifts slightly lower over the Oct. 31-Nov. 4 trading week

The S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index ended the Oct. 31-Nov. 4 trading session at 593.70 points, just 3.23 points or 0.5% lower. 

Critical Elements Lithium shares rose by 31¢ to $4.75 after the company announced it had received its last major environmental approval for its Rose lithium-tantalum project in Quebec. The certificate of authorization granted by the province follows a federal environmental approval in summer 2021, and the release of a positive feasibility study this June. The study outlined a a US$357-million, 17-year mine that would process 1.6 million tonnes of ore annually to produce 224,686 tonnes of technical and chemical grade spodumene concentrates, plus 441 tonnes of tantalite concentrate each year. 

“Rose has now passed key permitting and de-risking milestones that will allow Critical Elements to advance project financing discussions and clear the path to the mine’s construction,” Matt O’Keefe, a mining analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald wrote in a note to clients. “We see this as a major catalyst and should drive a strong re-rating of the stock upwards towards a valuation that is in-line with its peers.” 

New Found Gold shares rose 25¢ per share to $4.98 on the release of shallow, high-grade assays from its Lotto North discovery at its Queensway gold project in northeast Newfoundland. 

Highlights from Lotto North, part of the Lotto zone, include 2.1 metres of 37.36 grams gold per tonne from 69.5 metres depth in NFGC-22-690, 2.4 metres of 33.79 grams gold from 74.6 metres in NFGC-22-661, and 2.2 metres of 22.18 grams gold from 49.8 metres depth in NFGC-22-717. So far, New Found has only received assays from four holes at Lotto North. The company says that the Lotto-Lotto North segment of the Appleton Fault zone now has a strike length of 1 km, within a 3.2-km Keats-Lotto corridor at the project. 

New Found has completed about 74% of a planned 400,000-metre drill program at Queensway. Assay results for about 60,000 metres of core remain pending. 

Rock Tech Lithium lost 23¢ per share to $3.21 after the company released the results of a bankable project study outlining substantially higher capital and operating costs for its proposed lithium hydroxide converter in Guben, Germany, than previously projected. Capital costs are now forecast at US$683 million, up from US$560.2 million estimated in a converter engineering study released in late 2021. Rock Tech attributed higher capital and operating costs to inflation and tight global supply chains. The new study gives the project a pre-tax net present value of US$1.2 billion using an 8% discount rate and an internal rate of return of 24%. The converter would be designed to produce 24,000 tonnes of lithium hydroxide monohydrate annually, and the company plans to start early construction works in the first quarter of 2023, with commissioning slated to begin in the first half of 2025.