Matt Birney

Infinity Lithium has received strong support for its Spanish lithium project from the EU Commission’s VP in his keynote speech at the European Battery Alliance conference in Belgium. The EU is keen to capture some of the forecast €250b lithium market value and said that €20b would be made available for European lithium project development through the Battery Investment Platform.

Hawkstone Mining has produced a maiden mineral resource estimate for its Big Sandy lithium clay project located in Arizona State, USA, totalling 32.5 million tonnes grading 1,850 ppm lithium, for 320,800 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent. Lithium Carbonate is currently selling for around AUD$15,500 per tonne. Hawkstone’s resources cover just 4% of the project area and the company said there is still excellent potential to expand these with drilling.

Australian Potash has revealed that a scaled-down version of its brine concentration and potash salt crystallisation pond system has underlined the expected low-cost of the pond construction at its Lake Wells SOP project near Laverton, WA. The company recently constructed a pre-concentration brine pond and declared the trial a success, saying it performed as expected with seepage rates that will result in higher salt crystallisation.

Okapi Resources has secured an option to earn a 50% equity right in the highly prospective and underexplored Tendao gold project, located adjacent to numerous multi-million ounce gold mining operations in central Africa. The project is situated in the highly endowed Kilo-Moto greenstone belt, less than 100km southeast of Barrick Gold’s world-class Kibali mine that produced 800,000 ounces of gold during 2018.

Adriatic has tabled encouraging metallurgical test work results from its impressive Vareš multi-metals project in Bosnia. Initial findings indicate metal recoveries and concentrate grades that exceed specifications, with the ores potentially amenable to smelting. The results will be fed directly into a scoping study and will underpin a future DFS for the high-grade project.

Strike Energy has attracted ex-FMG iron ore heavyweight, Nev Power, to its board as the company approaches its moment of truth in the Perth oil and gas basin with well testing of its West Erregulla-2 gas well all set to begin. The company expects to commence production flow testing at West Erregulla-2 in October and it is hoping to become Western Australia’s next gas producer from it.

Blina Minerals will take a 50% interest in unlisted Australian exploration company, Colour Minerals and will shortly commence exploration across a gold-copper project near Tennant Creek in the NT. The Barkly project includes two exploration plays, with the area well known for its large, magnetite-hosted gold-copper deposits. The best historical drilling intercept is 20m @ 8.17 g/t gold and 0.61% copper from 157m down-hole.

Rox Resources and Venus Metals have hit the highest gold grades seen to date at the Youanmi South prospect near Youanmi in Western Australia, with drilling returning a solid peak intersection of 12m @ 12.7 g/t gold from 80m down-hole. The companies have also been targeting the Plant Zone prospect, which is a potential bulk mining, open-pittable ore source, with gold mineralisation occurring right from the surface.

Kairos Minerals has now delineated coherent, gold-in-soil anomalies with associated pathfinder mineralisation exceeding 8km in strike, at its emerging Croydon gold project located near Port Hedland, WA. The company also revealed that it has geologically mapped a major structural fault system along the same trend, which could possibly control the extensive hydrothermal gold system it is seeking to exploit in the area.

Strike Energy has concluded its drilling and completion activities for the exciting West Erregulla-2 well in the Perth Basin of WA, where it has located three separate gas discoveries and possibly the deepest occurrence of hydrocarbons in Australia. Earlier this month, the company completed wireline logging that identified a significant pay zone of conventional gas, which it said could potentially support a low-cost development.

Existing Hot Chili shareholders, Taurus Funds Management and Kalgoorlie mining identity, Murray Black, have corner-stoned a $12m capital raise for Hot Chili that has also attracted a number of institutional heavyweights out of North America and Australia. The funds will see the Perth based, ASX-listed company turbocharge its efforts to commercialise the Cortadera porphyry copper-gold project in Chile.

Aurora Labs may have underpinned the viability of the 3D printing industry by nailing the one thing that was holding the industry back – the speed to print items. The company has increased the speed of its 3D printing technology to 350kg per day, a 2215% increase in 12 months and is commercialising its proprietary printing technology after its RMP1 Printer completed full-size test prints as part of the commissioning process.

Sovereign Metals has identified six new rutile targets at its Malingunde project in Malawi. The company has been systematically exploring its ground for rutile mineralisation after receiving highly encouraging preliminary metallurgical test work results from its Wofiira rutile prospect. The new rutile zones appear to be open in all directions with near-surface zones spanning approximately 2.2km.

Image Resources has mapped out a swathe of ultra high-grade heavy mineral sands for a further 1.4km northwards at its Boonanarring mineral sands project near Perth. The company has completed infill drilling across all proposed mining blocks at the operation and with all assay results expected soon, it is aiming to complete a full update of the mineral resources and ore reserves for the project in the December quarter.

St George Mining has reported that significant massive sulphide mineralisation has been intersected during diamond drilling at its Investigators prospect, located within the company’s Mt Alexander project, near Leonora in W.A. The first hole hit a 27m wide zone that included a solid 8m width of sulphides and a smaller section with average XRF readings of 6.3% nickel and 2.7% copper.

King River Resources is ratcheting up the dial at its Mt Remarkable gold project in the East Kimberley region of WA. The company has been completing rock chip sampling and taking geochemical soil samples across newly discovered gold-adularia veins. Anomalous gold and silver values have been returned from this emerging prospect and include 0.42 g/t gold and 11.9 g/t silver from rock chip samples.

Azumah Resources has advised shareholders to ignore a 2.8c a share takeover bid from Ibaera Capital, its private equity partner in the Wa gold project in Ghana, saying the offer appears opportunistic given the recent strengthening in gold prices and it overlooks the upside potential of the recent Bepkong underground deposit discovery. Azumah says that Ibaera has paid up to 3.7c a share in the past for its stock.

Ironbark Zinc has appointed Michael Jardine to drive its zinc-lead project in Greenland from the Managing Director’s chair. Mr Jardine has a technical background in a range of industries including corporate development in mining and investment banking and looks well placed to take the helm at Ironbark. Former M.D and Ironbark prime mover Jonathon Downes will stay on as a Non-exec director.

Sovereign Metals has successfully extracted a high-quality graphite concentrate during its pilot plant test program in Africa. The processed graphite originated from the company’s Malingunde deposit in Malawi. Sovereign discovered Malingunde in 2015 where it has since delineated a total graphite resource of 65.1Mt @ 7.1% TGC. The company says Malingunde is the world’s largest saprolite-hosted graphite deposit.

Anglo Australian looks like it is well and truly onto something now at its Mandilla East project near Kambalda in Western Australia. Latest eye-catching drill intersections include a staggering 112m-wide zone going 1.5 g/t gold from just 41m down-hole and a 93m-wide hit going 3.11 g/t gold from 49m. Anglo is now working double time to unearth the full extent of this remarkable mineralised zone.

Altech Chemicals has been invited by the Saxony State Government in east Germany, to consider building a second HPA plant to lever off the burgeoning lithium-ion battery and EV manufacturing hub in that region. Saxony is one of the leading vehicle construction areas in Germany, with Volkswagen, BMW, Porsche and Daimler all operating plants in the State.

Lithium Australia has created an innovative new process that could potentially revolutionise the lithium battery recycling space. The company recently recovered lithium, nickel and cobalt from spent batteries during a trial. The process is able to salvage valuable metals normally sent to landfill and potentially “close the loop” for the lithium battery manufacturing industry.

Big River has cashed in its Meteoric shares for a cool $2.75m, issued as part of the sale consideration for its Juruena and Novo Astro projects in central Brazil in May. The company will now utilise the funds to progress exploration and resource development drilling at its Borborema gold project, where a DFS is underway.

Perth-based Horizon Minerals has completed its agreement with Kingswest Resources to fully divest its interest in the Menzies and Goongarrie gold projects, located north of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Horizon will receive a total consideration of some AUD$8 million for Kingswest’s acquisition of 38 mining, prospecting and exploration licenses.

Adriatic Metals has brought in Paul Cronin, one of its founders, to run the company and progress its outstanding multi-metals project in Bosnia. As a founding shareholder, Cronin has intimate knowledge of the project and the jurisdiction and therefore well placed to take it to the next level. Cronin, Eric De-Mori and Miloš Bošnjakovic originally floated Adriatic.

MGC Pharmaceuticals has expanded the number of patients now prescribing for or being processed to receive prescriptions of its medical cannabis-based pharmaceutical products in Australia and the UK to beyond 200. The company said that the key milestone readily demonstrates its strengthening position in those markets to meet the demand for its proprietary standardised, affordable medicines on a global scale.

Spectrum Metals continues its run of solid drilling success at its Penny North gold prospect located 25km south of the Youanmi mining centre in Western Australia. New drilling showed that the mineralised zones at Penny North are harbouring ounce plus dirt with drill hits including 2m at 32.5 g/t gold from 322m within a wider 6 meter intercept grading 11.1 g/t.

ClearVue Technologies has doubled the area of its insulated glass units, significantly growing sales opportunities for the ClearVue PV product range, which should allow architects and façade engineers much greater flexibility in design work for aesthetic purposes. New batches of the panel are being readied for production, with the company aiming to generate over 60 Watts from a single panel in upcoming prototypes.

Blackstone Minerals has unearthed a slew of platinum group metal credits amongst its nickel drill results that could redefine its Ta Khoa project. The company recently reported a 45.5m drill intersection grading 1.2% nickel with a surprising 0.35 grams per tonne platinum, palladium plus gold that could potentially redefine the economics of the company’s nickel project in Vietnam.

Infinity Lithium has completed a $1.5m placement, with two directors cutting their own cheques to help fund a DFS for its San José lithium project, located in western Spain. Back in August, the company delivered an outstanding pre-feasibility study for the integrated lithium project, revealing that the operation will throw up a pre-tax, net present value of USD$860m at an internal rate of return of 42%.

Troy Resources has discovered more near-surface gold at its Ohio and Hicks prospects in South America. Resource evaluation has commenced, with the company now optimistic that the new prospects could develop into future ore sources. Impressive gold hits such as 12m @ 14.99 g/t gold from 35m at Hicks and a growing mineralised footprint over 950m at Ohio are creating a sense of excitement around these new prospects.

Novo Resources has completed successful gold processing trials using innovative ore sorting technology at its emerging Egina gold project near Port Hedland in the Pilbara region of WA. The company used a combination of physical and mechanical dry ore sorting and processing techniques to separate coarse gold nuggets from waste materials in test work completed in Germany.