Craig Nolan

Venus Metals is on a roll with the first drill campaign at its Deep South prospect within its Youanmi project in WA’s Murchison hitting lithium paydirt. High-grade lithium pegmatites were intersected at both the East and North zones, with strong tantalum enrichment also recorded. The best grade recorded in the maiden campaign came in at a significant 2.89 per cent lithium oxide.

Altech Batteries has revealed a compelling set of numbers for its planned Cerenergy battery project in Germany, with its DFS forecasting a NPV of €169 million and annual revenue of €106 million generating EBITDA earnings of a juicy €51million per annum. The company says capital cost estimates of €156 million and a steady-state payback period of 3.7 years add to the project’s appeal.

Galan Lithium has continued to ramp up its Hombre Muerto West lithium chloride project in Argentina, with evaporation in its first pond continuing, a second now filling up and construction of a third well underway. The company says the first pond already contains about 500 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent, with production planned to start in the first half of next year.

Toro Energy is poised to launch drilling at its Wiluna uranium-vanadium play in Western Australia in a bid to provide sufficient ore samples to feed its upcoming pilot plant that is expected to begin operating in the next quarter. The company’s aim is to generate sufficient drill-core to provide a bulk sample of 20 tonnes to the pilot plant that is being designed in Perth.

Tests conducted by rare earths metallurgical specialists ANSTO Minerals have validated Red Metal’s breakthrough leach results using chip samples from its new Sybella discovery near Mt Isa in North Queensland. Red Metal says ANSTO’s supplementary findings back up its phase-one testwork that showed high recoveries and low impurities using low levels of acid consumption for both valuable magnet and heavy rare earth oxides.

ABx Group has expanded the rare earths zone at its Deep Leads-Rubble Mound project in northern Tasmania, with new drill hits showing mineralisation enriched in the valuable heavy rare earths, dysprosium and terbium. The company says its latest drilling proves that the site west of Launceston retains the highest proportion of the two elements of any clay-hosted rare earths resource In Australia.

Larvotto Resources has identified multiple new copper-gold-cobalt drill targets following a recent induced-polarisation geophysical survey at its Mt Isa project, adjacent to the historic town of the same name in north-west Queensland. The company is now planning reverse-circulation and diamond drilling at three main targets in the tough and hilly terrain across its prospective project area.

Reach Resources has linked up with emerging developer Delta Lithium, signing an earn-in and JV agreement on its Morrissey Hill and Camel Hill projects in Western Australia’s prospective Gascoyne region. Delta will pay Reach a non-refundable $3.2 million and can earn an initial 51 per cent interest by spending $3 million on exploration within the first two years.

Aruma Resources appears to have landed a decent fish after nailing higher-grade rare earths drill hits and samples at its Salmon Gums project, about 200km south of the regional town of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields. The company says one surface sample produced the highest recorded rare earths grade to date in the emerging Esperance ionic clay region.

DiscovEx Resources has stretched its Hercules prospect to a whopping 7km of anomalous gold found in soil after a sampling program at its Edjudina project, about 200km north of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. The extensional program completed north of the Hercules target produced multiple higher-tenor results within the broad anomalous zone, adding to several prospective targets already identified at the project.

Everest Metals Corporation is scaling up its Mt Edon critical mineral project in WA’s Mid West region after securing Edith Cowan University’s mineral research arm to help develop an innovative rubidium extraction process. The pair’s new research agreement will represent a key stage towards developing the dual-mineral deposit that sits about 350km from the town of Geraldton.

American West Metals is set to launch a new drill attack and smash into an exploration and resource expansion program at its Storm copper play on Somerset Island, within the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After recently boosting its cash holdings by $10 million, it expects the drill program to begin next month, with about 22,000m of reverse-circulation and diamond drilling planned.

American West Metals is cashed up and ready to tear into an exploration and resource expansion program at its Storm copper play in Canada after pumping up its bank account with $10 million in fundraising. The company says the raise was oversubscribed, with several of its directors intending to stump up their cash and participate in the placement.

King River Resources is set to kick off a new drill campaign at its Tennant Creek East project in the Northern Territory as part of a $2 million commitment to hunt for high-grade copper-gold this year. Drilling will target the promising Commitment, Langrenus and Providence prospects, all in proximity to several head-turning copper-gold drill intersections recorded in recent years in the highly-regarded Tennant Creek region.

88 Energy is poised to launch into the critical flow-testing phase for the Hickory-1 well at its Phoenix project in Alaska after commissioning its rig and finishing off the construction of its ice pad. With joint venture partner Burgundy Xploration contributing its share of the costs, testing is expected to start within the next 10 days once the rig mobilisation is completed.

Strickland Metals’ aggressive gold hunt in Western Australia is steaming ahead at full pace, with its recent air-core drilling program highlighting consistent hits in a newly-defined 750m zone at its Yandal project near Wiluna. The company says bottom-of-hole intercepts indicate a new structure west of its highly-promising Dusk til Dawn prospect that contains an inferred resource of 109,000 gold ounces.

Valor Resources has secured an 80 per cent share of the highly-prospective Hook Lake uranium project in Canada, just two days after acquiring the 83sq-km Frazer Lake lithium play across the country in Ontario. Hook Lake is in the Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan – a region that has become widely known as being the world’s leading producer of high-grade uranium.

Infinity Lithium has continued its chase for the rights to mine lithium and establish a conversion facility at its San José project in Spain by formally lodging an application with the local government. The project, with a mineral resource of 111.3 million tonnes grading 0.61 per cent lithium oxide and 206 parts-per-million tin, is in Extremadura – a remote mountainous region that borders Portugal.

Joint venture (JV) partners Horizon Minerals and Dundas Minerals have hit high-grade gold from an initial drilling program at their Windanya gold project after the two companies recently completed an option agreement.

Venus Metals has kicked off its maiden reverse-circulation drill campaign at its Youanmi lithium project where lithium-bearing pegmatites were recently discovered at its highly-compelling Deep South lithium prospect. The Deep South lithium prospect sits 44km south of the Youanmi Gold Mine, which is about 450km north-east of Perth in Western Australia’s rugged Murchison region.

Si6 Metals has added further impetus to its highly-prospective Botswana precious and base metals play, with its latest drill program striking high-grade silver and copper and exciting visual nickel sulphides. The company’s three projects in the southern African country provide a compelling mix of in-demand metals that are all expected to play a big role in the future clean-energy transition.

Strickland Metals says it has stretched its Marwari gold discovery by 400m to establish a total strike length of 1.1km following a systematic drilling campaign within its Yandal East project in Western Australia. And the company says its geophysical modelling has identified a further six promising “lookalike” targets in close proximity to the Marwari and Chetak deposits in the State’s Western Desert.

Image Resources is cashed-up and charging towards the next phase of its life as a mining company after today pocketing $22 million from the final shipment of mineral sands from its Boonanarring project in Western Australia. The company says its coffers have been boosted to about $50 million and it is preparing to use the funds on a basket of highly-prospective projects.

Aruma Resources has unveiled a swag of potential targets to follow up for gold and polymetallic mineralisation in the latest soil-sampling results from its Saltwater play in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. Sampling across three prospects at the Saltwater project has reaffirmed its potential as being a multi-commodity play for gold and base metals.

Strickland Metals has emerged as one of the ASX’s runners of the year, jumping 400 per cent to an 11-year high of 20 cents on Thursday, on the back of more drilling at its Marwari gold prospect near Wiluna in WA. Led by entrepreneurial boss Andrew Bray, Stickland sits as the lone gold explorer among a sea of lithium hopefuls leading this year’s ASX charge.

Critical minerals company Terrain Minerals has unveiled high-grade gold hits of up to 6.22g/t from drilling at its 100 per cent-owned Smokebush project at Yalgoo, some 350km north of Perth in Western Australia. The high-grade assays were returned from recent reverse-circulation drilling at the company’s new Lightning target – a highly-prospective area that runs parallel with its existing Monza prospect.

Global battery industry giant Shanghai Jayson New Energy Materials has become St George Mining’s biggest shareholder after grabbing $3 million worth of the West Perth-based lithium explorer’s shares. The company says the significant investment will enable it to better explore its portfolio of hard-rock lithium projects in Western Australia, with a priority focus on the flagship Mt Alexander operation.