Junior mining investors after concentrated exposure to the Government of Canada’s list of critical minerals need not look beyond Q Precious & Battery Metals (CSE:QMET), a stock whose Quebec-based exploration portfolio is prospective for the building blocks of emissions reduction, including copper, lithium, uranium, hydrogen and rare earth elements.
The junior miner, market capitalization C$2.60 million, stands to capture significant upside as ESG principles become table stakes across the world, guided by a management team, rich in tailormade exploration experience, that is no stranger to creating value in the mining space. This dynamic makes QMET stock’s over 97 per cent loss since 2019 an outsized value opportunity.
Let’s break down the critical mineral stock’s portfolio to better understand how it’s positioned to create shareholder value through exploration:
The La Corne South project
The 2,484-hectare La Corne South project, 23 km north of Val d’Or, Quebec, houses numerous copper, zinc, gold and silver targets backed by historical trenching and drilling.
The company has confirmed the project’s value proposition through sampling, an airborne magnetic survey, a ground-based electromagnetic survey and a trio of drill holes, among which 24LCS-01 yielded:
- A highlight of 4.2 per cent copper, 4 per cent zinc, 0.17 parts per million (ppm) gold and 30.3 ppm silver over 0.55 metres (m).
- A weighted average for the total mineralized zone of 0.83 per cent copper equivalent over 25.45 m.
- Separate samples sporting elevated nickel values up to 1.3 pounds per ton.
Survey work, 2023 sampling up to 622 ppm lithium and 2004 drilling by Falconbridge-Noranda up to 333 ppm lithium also support the project’s potential to host lithium-bearing pegmatites. This potential has been demonstrated in over 14 projects within the broader La Corne Batholith, including Sayona Mining’s North American lithium deposit 10 km to the northwest (proven and probable reserves of 29.2 million tons grading 0.96 per cent Li2O and resources of 57 million tons (MT) grading 1.05 per cent Li2O).
La Corne South’s prospectivity is sweetened by being only 10 km south of sulphide deposits with significant zinc, silver, copper and gold values (Abgam, Belfort, Baralee, Vendrome Number 1), and only 7 km northwest of the Swanson volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) showing, where values reach up to 103 grams per ton (g/t) gold and 45 per cent zinc.
Q Precious & Battery Metals is currently spinning its drill bits on the property for the 2024-2025 winter season as it awaits assays from 24LCS-02 and 24LCS-03. Its focuses include a cluster of TDEM anomalies to the south, particularly the largest at 215 m below surface, which appears to host potentially significant thickness, and a potential corridor of magnetic and electromagnetic anomalies over a 2 km strike indicated in the geophysics to be extended to the northwest.
The McKenzie East gold project
The McKenzie East gold project adjoins the east side of the McKenzie Break project owned by Monarch Mining, which features a February 2021 resource estimate of 1.4 MT at 1.8 g/t gold indicated and 2.2 MT at 1.44 g/t inferred, in addition to an underground mineable resource of 0.4 MT at 5 g/t gold indicated and 1.1 MT at 4 g/t gold inferred. Q Precious & Battery Metals plans to drill-test numerous new and historically informed targets.
McKenzie is one of two gold properties balancing out Q Precious & Battery Metals’ critical minerals projects by offering data-driven leverage to the metal’s recent ascent to an all-time-high.
The Lorrain hydrogen project
The 633-hectare Lorrain hydrogen project was originally purchased in 2020 driven by prospective historic exploration of its ultramafic rocks for gold and platinum group elements. The project is now observed to contain geologic features highly favorable for hydrogen, including components of the volcanic belt-graben model used by Quebec Innovative Materials (CSE:QIMC) to make it flagship discovery of hydrogen gas in soil less than 14 km to the southeast.
The Pegalith lithium project
The 1,409-hectare Pegalith lithium project, located 25 kilometres (km) north of Gatineau, Quebec, is only six km southwest of the historic Leduc mine and its 230 tons of 5.39 per cent lithium oxide (Li2O), with 10 other historic pegmatite mines on the property. Pegalith also features intrusive rocks with pegmatite segments, making them attractive targets for lithium mineralization. Q Precious & Battery Metals conducted an exploration program in 2023 in preparation for an initial drilling program.
The Pontax lithium project
The 5,376-hectare Pontax lithium property is surrounded by exploration projects from Li-FT Power (TSXV:LIFT), Medaro Mining (CSE:MEDA), Patriot Battery Metals (TSX:PMET), as well as Stria Lithium’s (TSXV:SRA) Pontax project, which yielded an intercept of 15.6 m of 1.6 per cent Li2O.
The Versant uranium and rare earth elements property
The Versant uranium and rare earth elements (REEs) property, in Quebec’s Cote-Nord region, covers a trend of elevated uranium and REEs delineated from historical rock samples, including 3,160 ppm uranium and total combined REEs of over 10 per cent. The company intends to compile more data to home in on exploration targets.
The Golden Valley project
The 1,601-hectare Golden Valley project, 30 km northeast of Val d’Or, Quebec, a city with a rich mining history, resides along strike with 14 other known mineralized showings. Hosted within the Abitibi Greenstone belt, only 26 km south of Hecla’s Casa Berardi mine, the property benefits from extensive drilling historically and by the company meriting further investigation.
These untapped projects, brimming with high-conviction targets, complement Q Precious & Battery Metals’ current focus – La Corne South – where it is drilling once more to test geophysical anomalies validated by three drill holes earlier in 2024.
Robust critical minerals exposure at an irrational discount
With more drill assays on the way to guide management’s exploration plan at La Corne South, a wealth of established targets to pursue resource delineation across the rest of its portfolio, and a focus on commodities with strong cases for long-term demand, it’s hard to see the market’s near total devaluation of the critical minerals stock as anything but an overreaction.
Whether it’s investor conservatism in the face of lingering inflation, junior miners’ pre-revenue operations, the difficulty of evaluating mineral projects, or a combination of all three, readers are being gifted a data-driven thesis for an outsized outcome, one where successful exploration leads to asset sales and/or resource delineation, followed by the creation of shareholder value, as Q Precious & Battery Metals’ target commodities power an increasingly greener way of life.
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(Top photo: Q Precious & Battery Metals)