Maronan raised $3.368 million against a target of $1.5 million in June, with a common denominator being Rob Rutherford, who is a non-executive director of the silver junior.

Other recent examples extend to Neurizon Therapeutics, a neurodegenerative medical company taking the fight to motor-neurone-disease (MND) who raised $7.8 million against a $2 million target and SRG Global, an infrastructure services firm who received a whopping $53.2 million in applications when seeking $6 million.

Interestingly, these successful raises were offered at modest discounts to the prevailing price at the time and offered no “option sweeteners” at a compelling price and long expiry period, indicating a great project-innovation-idea can still draw plenty of interest without the need for them.

Red Metal recently tabled a mammoth 4.8 billion-tonne rare earths resource for the Sybella project at 302 parts per million (ppm) NdPr and 28ppm dysprosium-terbium (DyTb), using a 200ppm NdPr cut-off grade.

Increasing the cut-off grade to 360ppm NdPr, the resource was estimated at 209 million tonnes grading 377ppm NdPr and 34ppm DyTb.

To get to those numbers the company covered more than 8km of enriched granite to collect 1,778 composite samples from a 10,511m air core (AC) and reverse circulation (RC) program, which included 139 drill holes.

Importantly, the resource material starts at surface and remains open at depths below 100m. However, the material also includes up to 788 million tonnes of soft weathered granite running at 297ppm NdPr and 28ppm DyTb, using a 200ppm NdPr cut-off grade, which provides an option for early, low-cost mining. This will now be the focus of initial infill drilling.

Early metallurgical testing has been promising, indicating that 21 per cent of the project’s mineral basket value comes from the high-demand heavy rare earth elements such as dysprosium and terbium.

Heavy rare earths are generally mined in significant quantities out of China which would make Red Metal’s Sybella project something of an Australian groundbreaker if it was able to also produce heavy rare earths at those levels.

The recent SPP oversubscription provides ample evidence that Sybella’s potential is well-regarded by the market and with further infill drilling and metallurgical testing, it could really set the project down a lucrative pathway.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: mattbirney@bullsnbears.com.au