Matt Birney

Affinity Energy and Health is now one of just a handful of companies that have received approval to establish a medicinal cannabis cultivation and manufacturing facility in Malta. The company plans to use its proven RotoGro technology used in Canada to develop a facility capable of producing 3000 kilograms of cannabis bud per annum once all expansions are completed.

TNG Ltd has locked down haul road and borefield/water access at its rapidly advancing Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project in the NT, just weeks after securing the key mineral leases. With these major milestones ticked off, the company will now focus on securing project financing.

Northern Minerals has generated exploration targets for its Dazzler and Iceman heavy rare earth prospects, located near its operating Browns Range mine in the Kimberley region of WA. The company recently discovered wide, rare earth mineralisation, rich in dysprosium at the deposits and is completing maiden mineral resource estimates for both. Management said the valuable high grade deposits could materially impact the longevity of its Browns Range operation.

PharmAust has confirmed that its flagship anti-cancer drug, Monepantel, produced using the recently determined “GMP” process, continues to demonstrate the drug’s expected ability to kill cancer cells while having little or no impact on non-cancerous cells. Further pre-clinical molecular pathway targeting studies will now be carried out to improve the company’s understanding of how the drug kills cancer cells.

Artemis Resources has secured a $5.4m funding package from a UK-based institutional group to underpin development activities at its Carlow Castle project near Karratha and exploration in the emerging Paterson Range area to the east. Funding will be used for resource development activities and metallurgical test work at the Carlow Castle gold-copper-cobalt project and to initiate regional geophysical surveys at the company’s prospective Paterson Range Armada prospect.

Precious metals explorer Emu NL has commenced its exploratory field program at the Vidalita project in northern Chile with a comprehensive campaign of shallow aircore drilling planned for its Peon 4, Vidalota D and Jotahues areas. The campaign will also target higher grade gold mineralisation at its main Vidalita project, vectoring towards a prospective fault zone it has interpreted from existing drilling data.

Lithium Australia is looking to use its proven technologies that can turn lithium mica mineralised waste into lithium-ion battery cathode powders at its Sadisdorf project in Germany and for similar resources elsewhere in Europe. The company will now include its proprietary technologies, such as its SiLeach process for extracting lithium phosphate from micas, into the scoping study for Salisdorf.

St George Mining has hit a 5.25m drill intersection going 6.95% nickel, 2.67% copper and 0.23% cobalt from 185m down-hole at its Investigators prospect near Leonora in WA. Another impressive 6.39m long intersection in a separate hole showed 6.48% nickel, 2.77% copper and 0.21% cobalt from 184.42m down-hole. The impressive results from massive sulphide intercepts continue to expand the footprint of mineralisation at the prospect.

Myanmar Metals’ drill campaign at its Bawdwin base metals project in Myanmar, has intersected high grade mineralisation of up to 45m @ 6.7% lead, 5.6% zinc and 113g/t silver from 76m down-hole in an area previously considered to be waste. The results could significantly add to the Bawdwin resource estimates and the economics of the China Pit pre-feasibility study, both of which are expected in early 2019.

Tyranna Resources’ partner Alliance Resources has returned some impressive high-grade intersections including a long 20m intersection going 12.44g/t gold from the Weednanna gold prospect within the Wilcherry JV project in South Australia. More RC drilling will take place in December to upgrade resources in the eastern optimised pit area from the inferred to indicated confidence level.

Infinity Lithium says its proposed AUD$395m Spanish lithium project could potentially churn out AUD$172m a year before tax in annual operating free cash flows for at least 24 years. The lovely set of numbers were contained in the company’s lower level scoping study announced to the market this week that details the preliminary economics of building a lithium hydroxide plant along side its lithium mine.

Strike Energy’s all-scrip takeover offer for Perth Basin oil and gas company UIL Energy is now unconditional after it received acceptances for about 56% of UIL’s shares on issue. Strike will now appoint its directors Andrew Seaton and Stuart Nicholls to the board of UIL while all of UIL’s directors save for Stephen Bizzell will step down.

Anglo Australian Resources has defined a mineralised gold zone over 2.5km long and up to 250m wide at its Mandilla project located near Kambalda in WA. The company is now on the hunt for the bedrock source of the mineralisation, which it believes lies at the sheared geological contact between a granite and a sedimentary sequence that will undergo future deep drill testing, according to Anglo.

ASX listed resume verification company, CVCheck, looks set to turn cashflow positive this quarter after a sustained focus on growing its more lucrative business to business market and an assault on costs has starting to pay off. The company’s revenues have grown $5m in two years from $7.1m in FY2016 to $12.5m in FY2018 whilst customer acquisition costs and cash burn has steadily decreased.

If it wasn’t Adriatic Metals, a 46m long drill intersection boasting at least 4 different high-grade minerals would ordinarily have the West Perth investment glitterati spitting their coffee across the table at Black Toms. But such is the quality of the results of Adriatic’s ongoing drill campaign that the bar has been set very high indeed for this rapidly advancing $54m market cap ASX listed exploration company.

Vonex is progressing beta testing of its game changing “Oper8tor” conferencing app which allows users of multiple voice communication platforms such as Skype or Whatsapp to talk to each other regardless of which platform each user subscribes to. Vonex says it has successfully facilitated over 1000 conference calls using the app and it has now opened the beta testing of Oper8tor Conference via web browser to the general public.

Sky and Space Global has signed a landmark distribution agreement with Pan-American satellite tele-communications consortium, Globalsat Group, for the provision of connectivity services using its nano-satellites. Revenues from this contract will flow immediately upon successful completion of in-orbit testing of the first batch of Sky and Space nano-satellites that are expected to be blasted into space around mid 2019.

Image Resources is starting to transport its zircon-rich heavy mineral sands concentrate from the Boonanarring project north of Perth to port storage in Bunbury, barely a month after starting wet commissioning of the mine plant. First revenues could kick in before the end of the year with the first bulk shipment of the zircon-rich HMC scheduled to depart in December.

Middle Island Resources is keeping the momentum going at its Sandstone gold project in WA with a slew of holes to be drilled at greenfield targets during the first half of 2019. The program is aimed at identifying and quantifying additional open pit deposits of sufficient scale and grade to facilitate a recommissioning of the historic gold operation.

Artemis Resources has completed preliminary metallurgical test work on ore composites from its Carlow Castle gold-copper-cobalt project located near Karratha in WA, saying that the materials are amenable to gravity recovery of gold and conventional base metal flotation ore processing. Up to 82% of the copper content reported to concentrates, whilst up to 75% of the gold was recovered via combined gravity concentration methods and flotation tests.

Caravel Minerals very large, lowish grade copper play in the Wheatbelt just got interesting after the ASX listed company this week tabled a set of drill results that show grades up to three times that of the existing global resource. New results include 6m @ 1.03% copper from 108m within a broader zone of 20m @ 0.5% copper from 94m and 18m @ 0.8% copper from 102m.

Anglo Australian has outlined a suite of shallow new drilling intersections from several prospects at its Feysville gold project located near Kalgoorlie. At Think Big, results included 28m @ 2.43g/t gold from 35m down-hole, whilst exploratory drilling at Saintly doubled the strike length of that mineralisation. A new gold discovery was also located at Hyperno, with 13m @ 1.05g/t gold returned from 25m down-hole in regional aircore drilling.

Coolgardie Minerals has kicked off a near-mine exploration drilling program at its operating Geko gold mine near Coolgardie in WA, with the aim of extending mineral resources beyond the limits of the existing open pit. The work will target areas east and west of the open pit at depth and also along strike west of a high-grade supergene oxide pod of gold mineralisation noted from earlier grade control drilling.

Southern Gold has used 3D modelling of mapped and sampled quartz veining at its Kochang underground mine in South Korea, to generate an exploration target of between 500,000 and 700,000 tonnes with a grade range between 5 and 7g/t gold and 27 - 35g/t silver. The company’s JV partner, Bluebird Ventures, is finalising its feasibility report on the reopening of the historical mine.

Artemis Resources will undertake a high resolution, low level, airborne magnetic survey targeting gold-copper mineralisation at its Armada prospect located near the Telfer mine in the eastern Pilbara region of WA. The 600 square kilometre tenement holding is effectively surrounded by Greatland Gold’s Havieron project where recent diamond drilling returned an amazing intersection of 275 metres grading 4.77g/t gold and 0.61% copper from 459m down-hole.

Australian Potash has harvested 11 tonnes of potassium rich salts in its first harvest pond at the Lake Wells sulphate of potash project in the Goldfields region of WA. Once the third and final evaporation step is completed, a blend of salts from all three harvest ponds will be processed to a refined a sulphate of potash product at the company’s pilot processing plant.

Lithium Australia has hit a major milestone with the successful production of lithium ion battery cathode powders and lithium ion batteries using lithium phosphate produced directly from mine waste courtesy of its proprietary “SiLeach” process. The company managed to bypass the need to produce high-purity lithium hydroxide or carbonate, which could significantly reduce the cost of battery manufacturing.

TNG Ltd has hit a major milestone at its Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project in the Northern Territory with the grant of four mineral leases over the development. This adds to the recent signing of the Native Title Agreements and binding term sheet for titanium offtake, providing the company with the security of tenure it needs to seek project financing.

Lithium Australia’s second generation SiLeach pilot plant trial at ANSTO Minerals’ facility in New South Wales has successfully produced a product containing between 90% and 95% lithium phosphate. A sample of the product is now being tested at Lithium Australia’s 100%-owned subsidiary VSPC Ltd, with a view to producing and testing lithium ion batteries made from this material.

BlackEarth Minerals has commenced a regional exploration program at its Maniry and Ianapera projects in Madagascar. The company is undertaking close spaced trenching and sampling work to determine future high grade drilling targets. The company will also table its scoping study for the Razafy project in December and is preparing a maiden mineral resource estimate for the Haja prospect located 2km south of Maniry project.

Coziron Resources has uncovered large scale gold and copper anomalies at the Edamurta West and Copper Valley prospect areas within its broader Buddadoo project region southwest of Yalgoo in the Murchison. Edamurta West is defined by a 1.2km long geochemical soil anomaly elevated in gold, whilst Copper Valley lies within structural corridors that returned rock chip assays up to 15.2% copper and 1.2g/t gold.

CVCheck’s new platform connector technology is expected to streamline its clients’ hiring processes by allowing them to connect their SAP human resources management software directly to its CV and resume screening platform. SAP SuccessFactors is a leading cloud-based software suite that covers everything from payroll to employee engagement for more than 6600 customers across more than 60 industries.