Rank junior mining companies by the grade and size of their mineral resource, filtered by commodity and development stage — the fastest way to see which deposits are actually high grade rather than merely described that way.
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| Rank | Company | Project | Stage | Grade | Ounces | NPV ($M) | AISC ($/oz) | Stock Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Almost every junior mining company describes its deposit as high grade. The word has no fixed definition, it costs nothing to use, and in a press release it is doing marketing work rather than geological work.
Grade is nonetheless the single most important property of a deposit, because it drives everything downstream. Higher grade means less rock moved and processed per ounce recovered, which means lower costs, better margins, and survival when the metal price falls. Two deposits with identical ounce counts can have completely different economics depending on the grade those ounces sit at.
This tool ranks companies by the grade and size of their reported resource, so “high grade” becomes a position in a list rather than an adjective. Filter by commodity, development stage and minimum resource size, and sort by grade or contained ounces.
Grade is reported in the units conventional for the metal — grams per tonne for gold and silver, percentages for base metals. Sorting by grade alone will surface small, very rich deposits that may be too small to mine economically.
Contained ounces is the size of the prize. A very high grade on a tiny resource is a geological curiosity; the combination of decent grade and meaningful scale is what supports a mine.
Tonnage is what connects the two, since ounces are grade multiplied by tonnage. It also indicates the mining method implied: large tonnage at low grade suggests open pit, small tonnage at high grade suggests underground, and the capital requirements differ enormously.
Stage tells you how far the project has travelled. An exploration-stage resource and a feasibility-stage one are not comparable propositions even at identical grade, because one has been tested against real costs and the other has not.
Useful grade thresholds depend entirely on the deposit type. For gold, an open-pit operation can work below 1 g/t if the tonnage and strip ratio cooperate, while an underground mine generally needs several grams per tonne to justify the development cost. Anything sustained above roughly 5 g/t is genuinely high grade; the handful of deposits above 10 g/t are exceptional.
What you are looking for is not the top of the grade list but the combination that is out of step with its valuation — decent grade, meaningful scale, a sensible jurisdiction, and a market capitalisation that has not caught up. The top of a pure grade sort is usually occupied by tiny high-grade resources that cannot support a mine.
Watch the resource category as well as the number. A headline grade computed largely from inferred material carries far less confidence than the same grade in the measured and indicated categories — see inferred vs indicated vs measured.
Rankings are built from resource estimates in filed NI 43-101 technical reports, taking the most recent estimate for each project and preferring measured and indicated categories where available. Filters apply to the project's primary commodity, its development stage, and a minimum contained-ounce threshold.
It depends on mining method. Open-pit operations can be economic below 1 g/t where tonnage and strip ratio allow, while underground mines generally need several grams per tonne to justify development costs. As orientation, sustained grades above about 5 g/t are genuinely high grade and above 10 g/t is exceptional.
No. Grade must be read alongside scale, metallurgy and jurisdiction. A very high grade over a tiny resource cannot support a mine, and a high-grade deposit whose ore is refractory or carries penalty elements may be worth less than a cleaner lower-grade one. Grade tells you about cost per ounce, not about whether the project works.
Because they have no filed resource estimate. An early-stage explorer may have excellent drill results and no formal NI 43-101 resource yet, which means there is no grade or tonnage figure to rank. Absence here reflects the stage of disclosure, not the quality of the ground.
Because grade determines how much rock must be moved and processed for each ounce recovered, and that drives the cost structure. A large low-grade resource can be entirely uneconomic while a smaller higher-grade one is profitable. Ounces tell you the size of the prize; grade tells you whether it can be won.