The Austral Resources Australia Ltd (ASX: AR1) share price screamed 43% higher in early trading today. The shares hit an intraday high of 60 cents, up 42.85% on yesterday's close.
This follows the ASX micro-cap announcing a significant copper find this morning.
The Austral Resources share price has since retraced to be up 12% at 47 cents at the time of writing.
Austral Resources is a copper producer in Queensland's Gulf Country. It's a relatively new ASX mining share having only commenced trading in November 2021.
What did Austral Resources say to boost its share price?
In its statement, the company announced assay results from a diamond drilling program at Flying Horse, which is a copper sulphide mine at Mt Kelly.
Flying Horse is situated on an existing mining lease. It contains a JORC Mineral Resource
Estimate of 14.2MT at 0.77% Cu (calculated in 2013 by the previous mine owner).
The new assay results confirmed 14 metres at 2.23% Cu, 11 metres at 2.30% Cu, and 19 metres at 1.69% Cu.
The company said it would now "accelerate determining the potential for economic extraction of copper
sulphide resource at Mt Kelly".
The company explained:
This program evaluates the suitability of Mt Kelly sulphide (chalcopyrite) mineralisation for an emerging sulphide heap leach SX-EW technology.
If the evaluation is positive, there is exciting potential for Austral to have an additional processing solution relative to conventional flotation for its sulphide resource base of 26.5Mt@ 0.8% Cu.
There was further work to do, as the company outlined:
This ongoing evaluation of Flying Horse is a further step in assessing the potential to begin commercialising Austral's 210,000t of contained copper in sulphides (26.5Mt @ 0.8% Cu) to augment the Company's current 40,000t Anthill Mine copper production from the Anthill copper oxide mine.
What else is happening with this ASX mining share?
Last week Austral Resources released its June 2022 quarterly report.
The company reported a 9.3% increase in revenue over the previous quarter to $5.16 million. It said "both revenue and production [are] on track for significant increase in the September quarter".
Austral Resources had a cash balance of $7.2 million at the end of the June quarter.
In its report, the company said: "[The] copper metal in circuit at end of July is building daily, positioning the Company for significant production and revenue increases in the second half of 2022".
The ASX mining share dipped by 4.65% on the day the report was released.
Last month we reported that Austral Resources executive director Daniel Jauncey invested almost $1 million of his own money buying more than 1.6 million extra shares. He already owned 10 million shares prior to the purchase.
Austral Resources is not the only small miner announcing big news in the copper space.
My colleague Monica reported on another ASX mining share shooting the lights out after another copper discovery yesterday.
The Cobre Ltd (ASX: CBE) share price rose 144% on the news yesterday after coming out of a trading halt.
