Matt Birney

The Dewrang target is now the highest priority target for Auroch Minerals’ upcoming drill campaign after a ground induced polarisation survey returned a chargeability anomaly twice the size of that of the Grainger zinc target. Exploration drilling targeting highly-prospective copper, zinc and gold at the Bonaventura Project in South Australia will start in the third quarter.

BlackEarth Minerals has reported outstanding mineralogical results for its Razafy graphite prospect in southern Madagascar, with a significant proportion of the samples being classified as “super jumbo” flake, which currently attract premium prices of nearly A$3,600 per tonne. The company also said that drilling at the Haja prospect, 2km south of Razafy, has intersected wide zones of graphitic schist, enhancing the Maniry project’s prospectivity.

Tech play Connected IO received combined cash receipts and accrued revenues of $998,000 in the June 2018 quarter with another $650,000 in purchase orders on the books yet to be invoiced. The company expects these results to scale up in the second half of 2018 on the back of its strategic relationships with major US customers.

Calima Energy says that it will benefit from more than $70b worth of proposed gas pipeline and supporting infrastructure projects that are either at an advanced stage of planning or currently underway in the revered Montney oil and gas formation in Canada. Calima will start drilling its 72,000 acres of land in the Montney this year.

Azumah Resources’ drilling program has provided further support for a possible feeder zone into the main Kunche deposit at its Wa gold project in Ghana which should enable the existing shallow pit design to be deepened. An update to both the Kunche and Wa Mineral Resource is expected in the third quarter of 2018.

Metalicity has identified two lithium pegmatites covering over 8km of strike at its Pilgangoora North project in the Pilbara. The exploration targets lie adjacent to a granite outcrop, which is interpreted to be the source of the area’s significant lithium mineralisation. The new targets are 9km along strike from the world class Pilgangoora spodumene deposits that hold 269.1 million tonnes grading almost 1.3% lithium oxide.

Vonex’s new customer sales online technology will enable channel partners to manage their customers’ telecommunications products efficiently online. This will include Vonex’s much vaunted cloud-hosted PABX office telephony systems. The new technology will be known as “Sign On Glass” and will play a major role on the company’s push into the channel partner market.

PharmAust’s wholly owned subsidiary, Epichem, is one of the first Australian companies to receive an international quality assurance accreditation coveted by manufacturers of pharmaceutical drugs. ISO17034:2016 covers the production of reference material used to check the quality of products or the calibration of instruments. Pharmaust is also rapidly progressing its promising Monepantel ant-cancer drug.

Myanmar Metals has increased the “indicated” status of its mineral resource at the Bawdwin polymetallic deposit in central Myanmar by 23%. The indicated part of the resource now sits at 24.8Mt @ 5.1% lead, 2.8% zinc, 0.2% copper and 134g/t silver. Myanmar is now focused on completing a Prefeasibility Study and is also planning to drill away from the main China lode.

Legend Mining’s aircore drilling program has better defined the extent of the four mineralised footprints at the Area D prospect at the company’s Rockford project in W.A’s coveted Fraser Range region. Legend is reviewing drilling data from the past eight months to determine its next steps and will carry out regional drilling in the project’s south.

A huge amount of data gathering during the drilling of Strike Energy’s Jaws-1 coal seam gas well has backed up the company’s bold punt on a deep coal seam gas well and left the management confident that it will become “a major productive area”. The company is hoping to book a gas reserve sometime soon after a successful flow test.

Image Resources has increased the forecast value for its Boonanarring mineral sands project in Western Australia by $38 million to $235 million on the back of higher zircon price forecasts by consulting company TZ Mineral International. The pre-tax rate of return is up to 125 per cent while payback is now expected in 13 months, down from 16 months.

Draig Resources’ metallurgical tests have resulted in gold recoveries of up to 98.8% using conventional gravity and cyanide processing on ore from the Tribune Lode discovery just 2km from the historical Bellevue gold mine in W.A. Draig will test deeper extension targets below the Bellevue mine and it expects to complete a resource estimate for the project in the third quarter of 2018.

Southern Gold has scored a bullseye with a new geological model for an area south of the historic Transfind pit, with first-pass drilling hitting gold in all 13 holes and producing a best result of 1m @ 133.67 g/t. The results have backed up hopes for shallow, very high-grade gold that could be trucked to a nearby plant and add to cashflow from the Cannon mine.

King River Copper has announced more high grade gold results from the Mt Remarkable gold project, 200km southwest of Kununurra in the Kimberley region of W.A. The company is targeting the Trudi Vein system with close spaced drilling to delineate multi-ounce, plunging ore shoots. Exploration drilling is underway east of the main Trudi lode too, at the intersection with the Grahame vein system.

Kopore Metals is starting a maiden 3,000m drilling program targeting the KM3 and GW3 targets at its Ghanzi West project in Botswana in search of regional scale copper silver anomalies. The project is located close to major development projects such as Cupric Canyon Capital’s Zone 5 resource and MOD Resources’ T3 copper project within the highly prospective but under-explored Kalahari copper belt.

Venus Metals has reported a significant increase in its near surface gold resource inventory at its Youanmi project to 10.1 million tonnes grading 1.65g/t gold for 533,000 ounces. When combined with the Youanmi Deeps underground resource, the global mineral resource at Youanmi now sits at just under 1.2 million ounces. The company is now looking at the viability of creating one “super pit” at the project.

Galena Mining has announced some outstanding results in a scoping study for its Abra lead project in WA. With an initial mine life of 11 years, a base case scenario produces a pre-tax, post-royalty net present value of $394 million and a 61 percent internal rate of return. When fully operational, Abra will produce 1 million tonnes annually and generate free cash flows of up to $110 million a year.

Reedy Lagoon will conduct sophisticated geophysical surveys at its lithium brine projects in southern Nevada to produce an accurate 3D picture of potentially lithium-rich groundwaters and boost its chances of a discovery. The survey technique, known as audio magneto tellurics, shows the location of highly conductive zones within the subsurface that could represent volcanic ash layers laden with lithium brines.

Hammer Metals is selling its 75% interest in the Millennium cobalt project in Queensland’s Mt Isa district to partner Global Energy Metals in exchange for a 19.9% stake in the Canadian company. This replaces the previous joint venture agreement and allows Hammer to focus on its exciting copper-gold exploration projects in Mt Isa.

King River Copper’s first trial with an alternative processing flow sheet for its giant Speewah deposit has produced vanadium pentoxide with a purity of 99.47% and could open the door to the production of a high purity vanadium product. The new process has become the focus of testing because it produces material that is more readily upgraded into electrolytes for vanadium redox batteries.

Southern Gold’s Gubong JV gold project in South Korea could have low capital and operating costs if results from preliminary metallurgical testwork carried out by partner Bluebird Merchant Ventures is any indication. A study into the economic feasibility of re-opening the historic high-grade mine is due to be completed in July 2018. With samples going an ounce to the tonne Gubong is looking interesting.

Legend Mining has extended the strike length of the third mineralised intrusive body at its Rockford project in Western Australia’s Fraser Range region to more than 100m. It will start regional aircore drilling on selected targets in the southern Rockford project and carry out a full geological and geochemical assessment of Area D drilling results.

Strike Energy expects its Jaws-1 deep coal seam gas well in South Australia’s Cooper Basin to potentially come online in early July. Production testing will confirm the commercial viability of Strike’s Southern Cooper Basin Gas Project which has conditional gas off-take agreements already in place with substantial domestic gas consumers.

Aquabotix has been awarded USD$78,000 from the US Navy to develop an unexploded ordnance detection solution that will be used to detect, locate and neutralise unexploded subsea ordnance. The company will incorporate the solution into its “SwarmDiver” miniature submarine drones or other unmanned underwater vehicles as it seriously strengthens its ties with one of the world’s most powerful militaries.

Neometals Ltd has reported a major increase to its nickel mineral resources at the Mt Edwards project courtesy of four new deposits, nearly tripling metal inventories to 7.4 million tonnes grading 1.7% nickel for just over 123,000 tonnes. The company recently completed the acquisition of the Mt Edwards tenements from Apollo Phoenix Resources and with them, the assignment of further nickel rights.

Vonex has started beta development of its Oper8tor communication aggregator application with a focus on system designs and platform architecture. Controlled testing is expected to start in October 2018 and the company is planning to soft-launch the app in Western Europe next year, to take advantage of its significant population and mobile phone usage.

Artemis Resources and Novo Resources have commenced a major exploration program aimed at proving up grades and tonnages at the Purdy’s Reward conglomerate and paleoplacer gold deposit, 35km southeast of Karratha, in the west Pilbara of W.A. The work will generate a mineralisation report to underwrite the application for a mining lease and the company also reported its 3.3km super-deep drill hole has reached 163m depth.

St George Mining has increased the footprint of high grade nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation at the Stricklands prospect with intersections that include 6.25m @ 2.36% nickel, 1% copper, 0.15% cobalt and 1.25g/t total PGEs from 67.2m down-hole. Mineralisation is open to the west, north and east of the prospect and the company is planning a follow-up drill program.

King River Copper is thinking about a serious upsizing of its proposed mine at Speewah after an initial pit study found a monster-sized pit could be the best approach to mining the giant vanadium-titanium-iron deposit. The latest study has lowered the strip ratio to just 0.4 to 1, taking full advantage of the large, flat-lying and evenly-distributed mineralisation.

Adriatic Metals has announced more stunning drill results from its Rupice prospect in Bosnia. High grade results were retuned from two ore lenses intersected in the same drill hole, including 36 metres grading 4.4g/t gold, 463g/t silver, 0.5% copper, 4.3% lead, 5.7% zinc and 55% barite from 196m down-hole and 22m @ 4.1g/t gold, 258g/t silver, 0.8% copper, 7.5% lead, 12.8% zinc and 56% barite from 244m down-hole.

New spectacular drill results from King River Copper’s Mt Remarkable gold project in the East Kimberley have extended a very high grade epithermal gold zone and shored up the company’s view there could be other gold-rich zones nearby. Best results from the latest assays include 3m @ 41.75 g/t gold, including 1m @ 81.5 g/t, from a downhole depth of just 16m.