Matt Birney

TNT Mines’ punt that the old workings on its East Canyon project in the USA should still be harbouring some uranium and vanadium riches looks to have been bang on after the company said it could see “visible” uranium and vanadium in the old workings at its Bonanza and None Such prospects

Infill drilling at the emerging Grace prospect near the Youanmi mill in WA’s Goldfields has thrown up more stellar gold intercepts for the ASX-listed JV partners Venus Metals and Rox Resources, including 2m at 176.03 g/t from 28m, within a total interval of 4m at 88.81 g/t gold from 27m. The latest results have extended the shallow deposit, with further, deeper results still pending.

Impact Minerals has been exploring its ground in the prolific Lachlan Fold Belt of New South Wales and the company’s efforts have unearthed some exciting results with rock chips from the Greenobbys prospect returning up to 9.5 g/t gold, 215g/t silver and 745ppm bismuth. Rock chip samples from the Boda South prospect also returned up to 0.1 per cent copper, 2g/t silver and 40ppm bismuth.

With a combined gold ore reserve of some 1.4 million ounces grading 1.7 grams per tonne and a total resource of 93.2Mt grading a solid 2.13g/t for around 6.4m ounces, Wiluna Mining is having no trouble finding even more gold – all within the shadow of the old headframe. The company’s exceptional recent results coincide with its recent rebrand from Blackham Resources to Wiluna Mining.

Podium Minerals is about to embark on a resource drilling program to test the prospective 15km strike length of its Parks Reef platinum group metals deposit near Cue. The company is aiming to define continuity in its west resource sector over a 6.1km length within the 15km Parks Reef zone. Drilling is also aimed at increasing the combined total strike length of resources within the reef to an impressive length of 8.5km.

Blackstone Minerals has upped the ante at its Ban Chang prospect in Vietnam with drilling intersecting 15.4 m of nickel sulphide mineralisation. The intercept extends the strike length of the target to over 1,200 metres and hints at the potential of the nickel system at depth. Exploration will continue throughout the region with results expected to flow from the ongoing drilling campaign soon.

ASX-listed Horizon Minerals is ahead of schedule at its Boorara gold mine just 10km east of Kalgoorlie’s super pit with 22 per cent more dirt already moved than originally contemplated at this point in time. An inaugural parcel of ore is currently being hauled to the nearby Lakewood mill with first processing to occur on July 13th.

Just a fortnight on from its $20 million capital raise, ASX-listed Legend Mining is back in the field with a 3-kilometre RC drill program. Recent aircore assays include drill hits such as 25m at 0.35% nickel, 0.17 per cent copper and 0.04 per cent cobalt from 64m along the eastern flank of a large gravity anomaly at its Mawson nickel-copper prospect.

ASX-listed Agribusiness developer, Alterra Ltd has turned the earth at its operation near Pemberton as it ramps up activity towards September this year when it intends to plant out the first five hectares of avocado orchard at its 300-hectare Carpenters project in WA’s premier south-west growing region. Alterra said water management would be key to delivering success at its institutional investment-grade agricultural asset.

Terrain Minerals has stepped up its hunt for gold in Western Australia with exploration at its Smokebush and Wild-Viper projects identifying new targets for drill testing including recognised gold-bearing structures and extensive old mine workings. Drilling is scheduled to kick off in the third quarter of 2020; to be funded in part by the recent $3m sale of the company’s Great Western tenure.

Element 25 has secured a critical access agreement with the local pastoral lease holder, paving the way for the grant of the mining lease at its lucrative Butcherbird manganese project in Western Australia. The grant of the lease will allow the company to swing into the next phase of mining approvals and see the project head into the mine planning phase for production.

Unlisted Barton Gold has achieved its native title clearances for an imminent 10 to 12-kilometre drilling program on ground around its mothballed Tarcoola high-grade open pit gold mine on South Australia’s Gawler Craton. Barton is targeting mineral resource additions below Tarcoola’s existing pit floor and adjacent mineralised structures where previous drilling threw up numbers like 22m at 6.75 g/t gold from 15m.

Anglo Australian Resources Mandilla gold project near Kambalda is rapidly taking on a new complexion with seriously long, high grade intersections now rolling off the drill bit at will. Latest numbers include 26m at 8.29 g/t gold from 76 metres down-hole. Exploration, including DroneMag, has identified a range of new targets and extended the discovery zone to nearly 3 km of strike.

ASX-listed automotive panel and repair shop conglomerate, AMA Group, has locked in improved pricing with key insurers, effective from July after concluding service agreement negotiations with all key players. The renegotiated prices are expected to result in meaningful growth across the company’s Australasian network of panel repair workshops that already look set to benefit from a lack of public transport use during COVID-19.

Novo Resources has taken yet another step towards commercial gold production, revealing that it is in advanced discussions with process equipment supplier Steinert Australia to acquire a mechanical ore sorting unit to field test its conglomerate-gold ores in the Pilbara. The unit will be manufactured in Germany and is expected to be deployed into the Pilbara in the latter half of the 2020 field season.

Hot Chili is back in the field at its giant Cortadera copper-gold project in Chile with the Perth company poised to extend an extraordinarily long drill intersection that has already unearthed over 300m of mineralised porphyry. The drill rig fired back up recently following a COVID-19 shutdown and Hot Chili looks to be primed and ready to again test its drilling prowess.

ASX-listed PharmAust Limited has shown that the initial successful testing of its cancer fighting drug, Monepantel, against the COVID-19 virus may not have been a fluke, with new testing showing a “remarkable” 95% suppression rate in the infectivity of the SARS-CoV- 2 virus (COVID-19) in laboratory tests by both Monepantel and Monepantel sulfone. Testing was undertaken at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne.

Venus Metals Corporation has received a further boost to its war chest with battery metal focussed eMetals Ltd this week forking out $160,000 to complete the purchase of Venus’ Poona Lithium project in WA. The sale allows Venus to shift its focus to a range of new project areas in the fertile terranes surrounding the Youanmi mining region.

Kairos Minerals has more than doubled its Pilbara land tenure in the vicinity of DeGrey Mining’s extraordinary gold find at its Hemi project. Exploration will begin in earnest in the coming weeks with geophysics to be run over the northern tenure and drilling scheduled at the Fuego and Mt Yorke prospects in July. The new acquisition takes Kairos’ tenure from 384 to 774 square kilometres.

Perth’s Infinity Lithium has secured staged funding of up to €0.8 million from the European Union-based EIT InnoEnergy to fund phase one of a pilot plant at its San Jose Lithium project in Spain. EIT InnoEnergy is mandated to support the European Battery Alliance of which Infinity is a member, who is seeking to build a competitive and fully integrated battery supply chain in Europe.

ASX-listed TNT Mines is investigating a US-listing after its East Canyon uranium-vanadium project acquisition located in the US state of Utah, received positive investor interest from North America. TNT is looking at the OTC Markets Group as a site for quoting its shares to facilitate offshore investor demand and consequently enhanced liquidity. TNT said there were currently limited opportunities to invest in US-based uranium projects.

PolarX has received firm commitments from investors to raise around $3.76m, which will be largely used for drilling at its exciting Zackly East gold-copper target at the Alaska Range project in the US where previous results included a whopping 55m hit grading 2.8 grams per tonne gold with 0.6 per cent copper thrown in for good measure.

ASX-listed oiler, 88 Energy, has gone unconditional on its all-scrip takeover bid for Alaskan neighbour, XCD Energy, after picking up 59 per cent of XCD’s shares and nearly 29 per cent of XCD’s listed options. The offer of 2.4 88 Energy shares for each XCD share held and 0.7 88 Energy shares for each XCD listed option is now final, unconditional and will not be increased.

King River Resources is on the home straight now as it looks to complete a pre-feasibility study on its Speewah high purity alumina project in the East Kimberly region of Western Australia. The company said it only has a handful of hydrometallurgical tests to polish off now before the final report can hit the streets. Mining, marketing and environmental studies have already been completed.

Blackstone Minerals has hit a new massive sulphide zone at the Ban Chang West prospect at its Ta Khoa nickel-copper-PGM project in Vietnam with its maiden diamond drilling returning 5m intersection grading 0.66% nickel from 58m down hole. The zone includes just over one metre going an impressive 2.98% nickel, 1.22% copper, 0.18% cobalt and 3.43g/t PGM.

Novo Resources has taken out some of Mark Creasy’s land holdings and JV interests in the Pilbara as Novo continues with its aggregation grand plan around its flagship Pilbara conglomerate and alluvial gold fairway. The deal will see Novo pick up another 2,900 square kilometres of ground adjacent to its Beatons Creek and Egina targets, where new alluvial channel gold finds have been made.

Horizon Minerals is showing itself to be more than just a gold mining house, delivering a massive vanadium resource at its Richmond-Julia Creek project in Queensland. This week Horizon tabled a colossal 1.8 Billion tonne resource at 0.36 per cent vanadium pentoxide at Richmond-Julia, with metallurgical test work showing that a high value concentrate can be easily and cheaply produced via conventional processing.

Lithium Australia subsidiary, Soluna Australia, has received approval from Australia’s Clean Energy Council for its battery energy storage systems. The company said CEC accreditation ensures Soluna products meet all necessary standards and are safe to install across the country. Soluna Australia is a 50-50 joint venture between Lithium Australia and Chinese battery manufacturer, DLG Energy (Shanghai) Ltd.

Troy Resources has recently commenced a trial mining campaign at the Ohio Creek deposit within its Karouni gold project in Guyana. The trial is intended to support Ohio Creek’s inclusion in Troy’s ore reserve and establish the best way to excavate the deposit. The company currently holds an ore reserve across five separate deposits at Karouni of some 1.3Mt grading 2g/t for 86,500 ounces of gold.

Ardiden Limited has racked and stacked a grab bag of gold prospects at its Pickle Lake project in Canada where the Perth based explorer is spoilt for choice when it comes to aiming a drill rig at them. To-date it has packaged up 18 advanced prospects and 100-plus geophysical targets identified right across the project that already has a resource.

TNT Mines has now completed the transaction to acquire its new East Canyon uranium-vanadium project in the USA. The company’s new asset comprises 200 patented lode claims in the Dry Valley\East Canyon District in Utah, which is one of the USA’s most significant uranium-vanadium mineral belts that has seen over 100 years of mining history.

Venus Metals is set to convert its 30% interest in the Youanmi gold project into a free carried interest up to a decision to mine with partner, Rox Resources set to do the heavy financial lifting. The move comes after the JV partners tabled a stunning 25 metre drill intersection going over an ounce to the tonne gold from the Grace prospect.