Lion Selection Group Limited (ASX:LSX) is a specialist investor in the junior mining and exploration sector. The firm focuses on building a portfolio of companies across various commodities to generate long-term capital growth. Lion has announced a $2 million strategic investment in Arika Resources Limited (ASX:ARI). This commitment forms part of Arika’s recently announced $6.5 million capital raise. Following the successful completion of the placement, priced at 1.9 cents per share, Lion Selection Group will hold approximately 6.7% of Arika Resources.
Arika Resources is an advanced gold exploration company with two key projects, Kookynie and Yundamindra, situated in Western Australia’s prolific Leonora-Laverton gold region. Both projects are characterised by extensive historic gold workings that strongly indicate prospectivity for new mineralisation, yet have seen limited modern drilling, leaving significant discovery opportunities untested. Arika’s Kookynie project features numerous prospects including the historic Cosmopolitan and Altona mines, while Yundamindra contains two gold trends with historical high-grade intercepts, such as 30m at 2.26g/t gold from Landed at Last.
These projects offer a diverse range of targets, from extrapolating historically mined mineralisation to new targets identified through structural interpretations based on geology, geophysics, and geochemistry. Arika is poised to commence its largest ever drill campaign across both projects, promising near-term technical developments and news flow. Lion Managing Director Hedley Widdup commented that it is “extremely rare to find collections of historic workings that were highly productive in their day, that have seen so little modern exploration to test for extensions or repetitions.” The investment sees Arika designated with a “chilli” in Lion’s portfolio, reflecting the transformative potential of its numerous targets.
