Doug Bright

Red Metal Ltd’s “metallurgy-first” approach to defining the potential of its unusual rare earths discovery in Queensland has paid early dividends, with tests showing extraction levels of up to 90 per cent on two key elements. Its Sybella project represents a potentially new deposit style for Australia – and possibly the world – with its rare earths hosted by partly weathered and fresh granite extending through a 12km-by-3km area.

Buxton Resources says a second diamond drillhole into the Dogleg prospect it shares with IGO in Western Australia’s West Kimberley region has thrown up a 2.89m hit going 4.17 per cent nickel and 0.83 per cent copper from 233.63m. The hole drilled by IGO, Buxton’s ASX 100-listed joint venture partner, also reported 0.14 per cent cobalt in the same intercept.

DiscovEx Resources says three reverse-circulation drillholes for 702m completed recently within its Sylvania project near Newman in Western Australia intersected banded iron mineralisation grading up to 48.2 per cent iron. The maiden drilling program was undertaken by Rio Tinto Exploration under the terms of DiscovEx’s Sylvania iron ore option agreement with the company. The longest intercept was 88m going 34.5 per cent iron.

Minerals exploration and development company GreenTech Metals has suddenly found itself next to a new power-play among lithium giants right next door to its own developing West Pilbara lithium project in Western Australia. Significant corporate activity is targeting the region, including global lithium giant SQM’s joint venture (JV) with Novo Resources and separately, SQM and Hancock Prospecting’s $1.7 billion bid for Azure Minerals.

Surefire Resources has developed a “breakthrough” metallurgical process which has yielded extraction rates of 91 per cent vanadium and 88 per cent titanium from its Victory Bore magnetite concentrate in WA’s Midwest. The company says its provisionally patented technology alleviates the need for standard vanadium industry pre-treatment processing and will be incorporated into its developing Victory Bore operations where its economic, operational and environmental benefits will be evaluated.

Askari Metals says its first exploration licence has been granted at the company’s Yarrie lithium project, just 100km east/north-east of Pilbara Minerals’ giant 214.2 million tonne Pilgangoora lithium resource. The entire project area comprises nine contiguous exploration licences which enclose a total of 1711 sq kms across ground adjacent to and along strike from other significant hard rock pegmatite-hosted lithium deposits.

Venture Minerals has wound up stage one resource drilling at its 40 sq km, large-scale, clay hosted Jupiter rare earths prospect, 80km south-west of Mt. Magnet in WA’s Mid-West region. The project previously threw up some eye-watering results including 32m at 1629ppm TREO from 22m including 16m at 2397ppm TREO and a further 2m at an eyebrow-raising 7367ppm TREO from 36m.

Larvotto Resources has finished a metallurgical auger drill program to determine just how much gold, tungsten and antimony was left behind in tailings from mining campaigns dating back to the eighties at its Hillgrove project in NSW. Encouragingly, old records show gold averaging 1.34 grams per tonne and plenty of tungsten was shipped into the 1.4m tonnes of tailings during historic antimony mining.

Senior geologists from giant Chinese battery raw materials supplier Huayou Cobalt have made a snap visit to Namibia to assess Askari Metals’ trenching and channel sampling progress at its Uis lithium project. Huayou, a major supporter and key strategic and technical partner of Askari, is listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of about US$12.8 billion (AU$19 billion).