- Metal Hawk flew up to 105.3% higher intraday after hitting 9m at 12.3g/t gold at Leinster South
- Encounter hits 19.7m at 5.3% niobium oxide at Aileron’s Green deposit
- TG Metals and Australian Rare Earths rally on lithium and rare earth development plans
Your standout small cap resources stocks for Tuesday, August 25, 2026.
Metal Hawk (ASX:MHK)
Metal Hawk hit a 12-month high of 19.5c, up 105.3%, before easing to 14.5c after a high-grade gold discovery at Leinster South in WA.
More than 17m shares changed hands after the company delivered the best drilling intersection recorded at the project to date.
RC drilling at the newly named Numbat lode within the Thylacine South zone returned 9m at 12.3g/t gold from 70m, including 5m at 20.7g/t from 72m.
The shallow high-grade mineralisation remains open along strike and at depth, with preparations underway for drilling to resume shortly.
Metal Hawk says the result supports its interpretation of stacked mineralised quartz-vein systems that increase in grade and thickness at depth.
Early interpretations suggest the high-grade Numbat lode trends north-south, oblique to the northwest-trending veins previously mapped at surface, although further drilling is required to validate the model.
That gives the company a new structural orientation to target as it searches for further high-grade zones across Leinster South.
The project sits on the southeastern limb of the Lawlers Anticline within the world-class Agnew-Wiluna Greenstone Belt.
“We now have an excellent opportunity to build on these results,” managing director Will Belbin said.
The next test is whether follow-up drilling can extend Numbat along strike and at depth while identifying further high-grade shoots across the broader stacked vein system.
Encounter Resources (ASX:ENR)
Encounter gained 20% to 27c after delivering more high-grade niobium hits from its Aileron project in WA’s West Arunta.
Infill drilling at Green prospect produced the best result of 19.7m at 5.3% niobium pentoxide (Nb2O5) within 92.4m at 2% from 74m depth.
Another hole delivered 33.7m at 3.8% Nb2O5 within 76.4m at 2.3% and another hit 45m at 2.9% within 71m at 2%.
These grades are well above Green’s current resource grade and sit in areas flagged for potential starter pits.
Green holds an inferred resource of 19Mt at 1.6% Nb2O5 above a 1% cut-off, within a larger 100Mt at 0.71%.
Infill and extensional drilling is ongoing as Encounter aims to boost resource confidence and lift grades in early mining zones.
At the same time, diamond drilling is underway to test how deep the emerging Emily deposit goes.
Shallow aircore drilling at Emily yielded 7m at 3.1% Nb2O5 from 41m to end of hole. Another hole hit 16m at 2.4% within 67m at 1% from 65m to end of hole while a third hole delivered 12m at 1.8% within 62m at 0.7%, again ending in mineralisation.
Emily hosts 3.5Mt at 1.9% Nb2O5 above a 1% cut-off, within a wider 14Mt at 0.93%. Encounter is now testing if the shallow high-grade system runs deeper.
Diamond drilling has kicked off from the site of an earlier aircore hole that ended in 15m at 2.4% niobium oxide. The program will also deliver material for metallurgical testwork and could feed into future mine planning and an updated Emily resource.
Encounter has already drilled more than 40,000m at Aileron in 2026 and is planning another 30,000m. Three rigs are running across resource, exploration, geotechnical and hydrogeological programs.
Executive chairman Will Robinson said Green was delivering some of its highest grades to date in potential starter-pit areas, while Emily’s growing near-surface footprint could support bringing the deposit forward in the development schedule.
Aileron now boasts a broader inferred resource of 120Mt at 0.77% niobium oxide, including 26Mt at 1.7%. The next big test is whether drilling can expand Emily at depth and upgrade the high-grade zones that could support an early development plan.
TG Metals (ASX:TG6)
(Up on no fresh news)
TG Metals traded 13.3% higher to 25.5c despite releasing no fresh operational news.
Its latest project update showed drilling had started at the Burmeister lithium deposit within the Lake Johnston project in WA as TG Metals advances a potential low-capital direct shipping ore development.
The diamond program includes three holes within the proposed Stage 1 DSO pit shell and is expected to take no more than three weeks.
This drilling follows requests from potential offtake customers for samples of Burmeister’s spodumene-rich pegmatite.
Recovered core will be cut, scanned and prepared for potential customers, while quarter-core samples will also undergo laboratory lithium analysis.
Discussions with traders and spodumene customers are progressing.
Burmeister hosts an inferred resource of 6.71Mt at 1.18% lithium oxide above a 0.4% cut-off, while TG Metals has outlined a broader exploration target of 11-14.5Mt at 0.9-1.2%.
The company is considering a staged development strategy.
Stage 1 would target DSO production from the initial pit shell, offering a potentially lower-capital pathway to early cash flow, while Stage 2 envisages a larger conventional DMS and flotation operation producing spodumene concentrate.
Preliminary mine design work has started following submission of a Mining Lease application earlier this year, with further DSO studies covering pit design, haulage roads and crushing requirements.
CEO David Selfe said interest in the DSO opportunity had been supported by improving market prices and described the development route as a potential way to generate cash flow towards a larger concentrate operation.
The next milestones are completion of customer-sample drilling, progress in offtake discussions and further work determining whether Burmeister can support the proposed near-term DSO development.
Australian Rare Earths (ASX:AR3)
Australian Rare Earths was 23.8% higher at 13c after releasing a Koppamurra development presentation ahead of the Tribeca Future Facing Symposium in Singapore.
The presentation put the spotlight on Koppamurra’s PFS economics, which outline a post-tax NPV8 of $858m, a 99% IRR and payback of about 0.9 years on estimated initial capital of $178m.
The proposed operation would initially run for 12 years and produce an average 1865tpa of total rare earth oxides, including about 438tpa of NdPr and 57tpa of dysprosium and terbium.
Importantly, AR3 says the project retains strong economics under a lower-price-floor scenario, with a post-tax NPV8 of $635m and an 83% IRR.
Koppamurra hosts a maiden ore reserve of 26Mt at 920ppm TREO within a broader 243Mt resource at 751ppm TREO, giving the company scope to extend the project beyond its initial mine life as more material is converted.
The project also carries exposure to strategically important heavy rare earths including dysprosium and terbium, alongside yttrium, gadolinium and samarium.
AR3 is proposing a relatively simple development model based on shallow, free-digging clay ore, conventional open-pit mining and heap leaching, with no drill-and-blast requirement and progressive rehabilitation built into the mine plan.
The company already has a non-binding MOU with Neo Performance Materials covering 50% of Stage 1 production and has secured a $5m government grant to help advance Koppamurra towards development.
The next major milestones are completing the ANSTO pilot program, progressing the Mining Lease application and advancing DFS, offtake and project-funding discussions.
Manhattan Corp (ASX:MHC)
(Up on no fresh news)
Manhattan rose 21.7% intraday to 2.8c before closing at 2.7c despite no fresh news as investors continued to digest last week’s standout maiden drilling results from the Jaws prospect at its Hook Lake project in Nunavut, Canada.
The first batch of assays delivered 41.15m at 4.66g/t gold from 83.82m, including 7.62m at 18.67g/t, with individual samples grading as high as 41g/t.
This intercept was wider and of higher grade than the nearest historical hole, which returned 22m at 2.41g/t Au from 100m.
The result gives Manhattan an early indication that previous drilling may have understated the scale and grade of the system.
Other first-pass results included 79.25m at 0.78g/t Au from 38.1m, including 33.53m at 1.04g/t, as well as separate 9.15m intersections grading 1.99g/t and 1.73g/t.
The drilling has also refined Manhattan’s geological model, shifting the interpreted position of the main Jaws shear about 20-30m northwest of the historical interpretation and providing a clearer target for potential high-grade shoots.
Jaws has a non-JORC historical mineral estimate and remains open in multiple directions, with historical drilling reaching only about 190m vertical depth.
The 2026 drilling program has now passed 3000m across 13 holes, with further Jaws assays pending, while the rig has moved on to test the nearby Spectre VMS target.
Further assays will indicate whether the standout first hole forms part of a broader high-grade gold system.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent financial advice before making any financial decisions.
At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While TG Metals is a Stockhead advertiser, they did not sponsor this article.
