By Barry Fitzgerald in Resources Rising Stars

It doesn’t matter much if an investor’s preference is to pronounce junior explorer Boadicea (BOA) as Bow-da-see-a or Boo-da-ka, it will be one to watch in coming months.

Priced at 26c for a market cap of $16.1m, the very lightly traded stock has long been a player in WA’s Fraser Range, home to IGO’s Nova nickel-copper operation, and the AngloGold/IGO Tropicana gold mine, soon to become the AngloGold/Regis gold mine, with IGO selling its 30% stake for $903m.

IGO’s newly acquired status as a one stop shop for battery materials (Nova, and its Greenbushes lithium acquisition, minus Tropicana) depends on it finding new nickel deposits to extend the life of the Nova operation.

To that end, IGO has been committing serious amounts of exploration dollars across the Fraser Range, on a 100% basis, in joint ventures, and in conditional sales agreements.

One of the conditional sales agreements is with Boadicea, under which IGO has five years of exclusive exploration rights for nine Fraser Range tenements owned by Boadicea. Should IGO declare a resource, Boadicea stands to receive a $50m and a 0.75% royalty on all revenues.

As it is, IGO has advised Boadicea that it plans to start drilling one the company’s licence areas (Symons Hill) in May/June.

Symons Hill is an interesting one as IGO will be drilling for an extension of what it has been finding at its own highly rated Orion prospect across the tenement boundary, and all within a stone’s throw of the Nova treatment plant.

Such is the developing urgency in finding life extending ore for Nova, it won’t take much on the resource declaration front at Symons Hill, or any of the other Boadicea licenses, to trigger the cash/royalty payment.

In striking the deal with IGO, it could be argued Boadicea has given away the upside should a big discovery be made on its ground. But it has been a sensible thing for a junior without a deep treasury to do.

And besides, letting IGO pick up the running has freed up Boadicea to get cracking on a new exploration front – the Paterson Province, home to Newcrest’s Telfer gold mine, Rio Tinto’s Winu copper-gold discovery, and the Havieron gold-copper discovery of Newcrest/Greatland.