Doug Bright

ABx Group’s 83 per cent-owned subsidiary ALCORE will look to further refine its process to recover and recycle waste aluminium fluoride after securing a $474,000 Australian Government rebate for its research-and-development work in the past financial year. ALCORE’s “world-first” and environmentally-friendly process has been designed to recover hydrogen fluoride from the excess bath that is produced during the smelting of aluminium.

Meeka Metals is set to plunge 22,500m worth of underground and grade-control drilling into its Murchison gold project in WA’s Mid West in a bid to unveil new mining areas to help fill its recently-expanded processing capacity. Management has also confirmed a new drill-for-equity deal with contractor Topdrill as it looks to assess high-grade plunging shoots beneath oxide open pits at its Turnberry mine.

Chariot Corporation has struck some intriguing mineralisation during exploration at its Black Mountain project in the United States, suggesting it may be homing in on a high-grade lithium source, which early evidence suggests may be lurking beneath. The company has confirmed the presence of rubidium in feldspar crystals, which is often a pathfinder to lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) mineralisation, with high ratios of potassium-to-rubidium being a further source of encouragement.

Legend Mining is preparing the diamond drill bit after identifying six important electromagnetic geophysical nickel-copper conductors at its Octagonal prospect within Western Australia’s Fraser Range. The company believes its newly-discovered conductors relate to and potentially extend the mineralised eastern margin of the Octagonal intrusive – part of its Rockford project – where previous drilling has already delivered multiple nickel-copper sulphide intercepts.

In this week’s edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some of the notable drill intersections revealed on the ASX, including Mako Gold’s 7m at 5.39g/t gold from 87m at its Napié project in Côte d’Ivoire. We also take a close look at other drill hits from last week as reported by Sunshine Metals in Queensland and West African Resources in Burkina Faso.

Javelin Minerals has identified a host of copper-gold exploration targets at its Coogee project in the St Ives goldfield in Western Australia after independent and collaborative reviews of reprocessed geophysical and other data. Recently-defined drill sites include a gold-copper target indicated by a high-intensity magnetic anomaly 300m north of the Coogee open pit and potentially down-dip from the company’s Coogee North mineralisation.

Novo Resources has opened the gates to further exploration activities at its priority Bamboo and Miralga projects in Western Australia’s East Pilbara region after securing a key Aboriginal heritage agreement. The agreement with traditional landowners will facilitate the company’s exploration activities across some 1500 square kilometres of its East Pilbara titles and will include non-ground-disturbing surface work such as mapping and geochemistry.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining is all cashed up and raring to rip into a new air-core drilling program to follow up shallow gold targets identified in its first probing of the Wessex deposit within its Pinjin project in WA. The program will entail 4500m of AC drilling in KalGold’s bid to further assess results from Wessex just three months ago that included 28m at 1.27g/t gold.

Infinity Mining is stretching its wings into multiple new gold, copper and other base metal projects in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, with ground acquisitions from two vendors covering more than 2000 square kilometres. The projects are well-situated near other mining operations and come with extensive datasets and existing workings that will assist the company to quickly gain a rapid foothold on exploration and development.

American West Metals has paved the way for a resource upgrade and extension for its Cyclone deposit in Canada, with notable new drill hits including 19.8m at 1.2 per cent copper and 3g/t silver from just 12.2m. That intercept includes 4.6m going 3 per cent copper and 7g/t silver from 21.3m and a 3m slice running 3.2 per cent copper and 8.5g/t silver from 59.4m.

GreenTech Metals’ recent downhole electromagnetic survey at its Whundo project in WA’s Pilbara region has identified a big conductor plate measuring 400m long and between 50m and 100m wide at its Shelby target. It comes after Fox Resources’ geophysical work in 2006 picked up a deep conductor associated with a weak magnetic response at Shelby, about 500m north of the old Whundo open pit.

Terrain Minerals’ geophysics have identified five conductors at its Lort River project near Esperance in Western Australia that show the potential for sulphide mineralisation analogous to IGO’s renowned Nova-Bollinger deposits in the same mineral belt. Two of the conductors lie on the western periphery of a prominent “eye-shaped” aeromagnetic imagery feature that may also signify a mineralised mafic intrusive.

American West Metals’ recent metallurgical testwork on copper-mineralised sample material from its Cyclone and Chinook deposits at its Storm project in Canada has successfully generated what it says is commercial-grade direct shipping ore. The testwork employed a two-circuit ore-sorting and inline pressure jig stream, which was shown to produce a range of direct shipping copper concentrate grades with good yields.

In this week’s edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some of the notable drill intersections revealed on the ASX, including Wildcat Resources’ Tabba Tabba run of 67m at 1.9 per cent lithium oxide. We also look at other interesting intercepts as reported by Rumble Resources from its Western Queen project in WA and Strickland Metals at its Rogozna project in Serbia.

Image Resources has confirmed it has received the final approvals it needs to kick off the long-awaited onsite construction of its Atlas heavy mineral sands project in Western Australia’s Perth Basin. The company says it has now secured the vital go-ahead from the Federal Government after it satisfied proposed conditions relating to the Atlas development under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

ABx Group says it has uncovered the potential for resource extension at its Deep Leads rare earths prospect in Tasmania after receiving the first 316 assays from its 37-hole maiden air-core drilling sortie. The company’s latest assay suite not only revealed thicker rare earths intercepts than usual, but also a high 4.3 per cent proportion of the high-value dysprosium and terbium elements.

Reach Resources says geophysics, geochemistry and rock microscopy have confirmed a 4.5-square-kilometre oval body as an alkaline intrusive and the likely source of big rare earths-niobium hits at its Wabli Creek project in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region. Wabli Creek is one of two exploration licences held by Reach in the highly-prospective Yinnetharra area that is well-known for its often unusual, but critical mineral assemblages.

Sabre Energy has agreed to stump up $6 million in drilling and testing costs at Buru Energy’s Rafael Shallow oil well in Western Australia’s onshore Canning Basin to earn 50 per cent of any commercial discovery and production. If the drilling leads to a commercial discovery, Sabre will also compensate Buru for its prior Rafael exploration expenses with a further payment of $1.5 million.

A Latitude 66 geophysics survey has identified strong conductors at the company’s K9 prospect in Finland that correlate with multiple conductors down-plunge from known gold-cobalt mineralisation and local shear zone orientation. The significance of the downhole electromagnetic results from two adjacent holes is that they confirm continuity of K9 mineralisation towards the south-west and north-east and also down-dip and down-plunge.

Buxton Resources is setting out on the trail of encouraging results gleaned last year from its Dogleg nickel-copper-cobalt project in WA’s Kimberley region as the company kicks off its new field season with up to eight diamond drillholes. Management is also planning to run extensive moving loop electromagnetic surveys to detect conductivity anomalies that could be related to nickel-copper-cobalt sulphide mineralisation away from previous drilling.

White Cliff Minerals has confirmed the locations of historical high-grade results for a suite of valuable minerals at its two key Canadian projects, defining multiple priority targets for early drilling after completing a maiden field work campaign. Field reconnaissance, mapping and sampling has identified four iron oxide-copper-gold targets at its Great Bear project and multiple styles of copper mineralisation at its Rae play.

Middle Island Resources has hit the ground running with the completion of the first of three diamond drill holes at its Flintstones-themed Georgina project in the Northern Territory where it is testing for iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) potential. The company recently kicked off its first round of drilling at Georgina and is expecting to drill three diamond drill holes between 600m and 650m deep.

Image Resources is continuing its push towards the construction of its Atlas heavy mineral sands project in Western Australia’s North Perth Basin after sealing State Government approval for its mining proposal. The approval from the WA Department of Energy, Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety is another step forward along the development path for the project located 170km north of Perth.

Aruma Resources has identified high-grade surface sample assays grading up to 36 per cent copper in data acquired from previous explorers in the company’s Fiery Creek copper project near Mt Isa in Queensland. The results come from surface rock chip sampling programs carried out across multiple prospects by previous explorers at Fiery Creek which include Sumitomo, Anglo American and MIM (now Glencore).

In this edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some of the notable drill intersections revealed on the ASX this week, including Far East Gold’s 20m intercept at 7.57g/t gold and 8.5g/t silver from 67.5m. We also take a close look at other interesting drill hits from last week as reported by Vital Metals in Canada and AIC Mines in Queensland.

White Cliff Minerals has unveiled extensive evidence of chalcocite-dominant, copper-rich vein systems along big strike distances after maiden field work at its Rae project in the Canadian province of Nunavut. The company has reported significant – sometimes spectacular – hard surface evidence of the red metal at its PAT, HALO, Cu-TAR, DON CALMAL and Kilauea targets, with abundant native copper observed at surface in the latter.

Octava Minerals is on the cusp of kicking off a soil sampling program in a bid to expand the Razorback gold prospect at its 202sq-km Talga lithium-gold project, 30km east of Marble Bar in WA’s Pilbara region. Despite Razorback showing significant gold intersections in previous drilling, including 5m at 2.23g/t from 24m, only 700m of its interpreted 4km strike has been drilled.

American West Metals has extended the high-grade Thunder copper zone at its Storm project in Canada’s Nunavut province to more than 300m after completing 66 reverse-circulation and diamond drillholes. The company has also received encouraging visible indications of mineralisation in its first 22 drillholes, with nine step-out holes exhibiting thick copper mineralisation to confirm the 300m strike extent of the target.

Quantum Graphite says its airborne geophysics have defined a new high-grade graphite zone about 2.5km long in the north-west area of its Uley 2 exploration licence on SA’s Eyre Peninsula. It comes after the company confirmed in April the completion of its helicopter-borne versatile time domain electromagnetic (VTEM) and magnetics survey that was part of its planning for Uley 2 and Uley 3 project extensions.

Gold Mountain has defined extensive multi-element anomalism pointing to iron oxide copper-gold (IOCG) and lithium potential in two areas covered by an initial 231 stream sediment samples from its Iguatu Project in Brazil. The company says it has identified clusters of broad halo-style iron and sodium anomalies and copper-gold-mercury anomalies generally associated with the more strongly-mineralised parts of Australia’s renowned Olympic Dam IOCG deposit.

Gold Mountain has defined several new drill targets at its Down Under project in Brazil following the completion of extensive scout stream sediment sampling and 85 line kilometres of radiometric surveying. While 800 stream sediment samples have been collected to date, only 25 per cent of the results have been returned, with about 61 of them revealing strong potential for high-grade, monazite-hosted rare earths-niobium-uranium-scandium mineralisation.

Aurum Resources says it has obtained outstanding gold leach results exceeding 93 per cent recovery in recent metallurgical testwork on 50 samples from its Boundiali BDT1 target in Côte D’Ivoire, West Africa. Samples selected for 24-hour cyanide bottle-roll leach tests were drawn from diamond core at various stages of oxidation and across a range of gold grades expected in routine open pit mining.