Matt Birney

The dominos are starting to fall for ASX listed Medical Cannabis upstart MGC Pharma, with its third regulatory approval in 3 months being granted. The company will now have the right to market its unique medical cannabis based cosmetic line known as “MGC Derma” into the $1.9b a year Canadian market after the Canadian regulatory authority, Health Canada approved the product.

ASX listed explorer Hammer Metals is in the final planning stages of executing multiple drilling programs across a host of exciting targets within its Mt Isa Copper/Gold/Cobalt project. Importantly it will follow up an impressive historic Copper/Gold/Cobalt hit on its Millennium leases that is the equivalent of a 19m intersection grading 4% Copper. 

MGC Pharma have broken into the $11b American skin care market after achieving US Food and Drug Administration approval for their “MGC Derma” cosmetics line manufactured from medical cannabis. They recently secured the notoriously hard to get FDA approval giving them the right to market their products into all US states and they have already secured a 1.2m Euro order. 

West Perth based explorer Drake Resources is now about to officially become a technology company after completing extensive due diligence on Israeli based cyber security firm Genome Technology Ltd. Both Drake and Genome have completed their respective due diligence programs and a reverse takeover of Genome by Drake will now occur.

Sipa Resources’ share price jumped 20% last week on the back of what looks to be a successful drilling campaign at the Akelikongo nickel/copper Project in Uganda. The market is eagerly awaiting the results of the latest drilling campaign after the company announced last week they had hit significant mineralization in 10 out of 12 holes with all results currently pending.

With only months to go before making the leap into production, Neometals have discovered a new highly mineralized zone at their celebrated Mt Marion Lithium project in W.A. Grades are all above the project average of 1.39% Li2O and include a 186m intersection grading 1.82% Li2O from 95m, 139m grading 1.69% Li2O from 116m and 92m @ 1.54% Li2O from just 54m down. 

Red Mountain Mining will now significantly ramp up their Batangas Gold project in the Philippines following the formalising of their joint venture agreement this week with UK based Bluebird Merchant Ventures. Red Mountain management negotiated a sublime deal with Bluebird that values the Batangas project at 3 times the entire company's market cap. 

Shark Mitigation Systems have announced the achievement of their first major milestone after only listing on the ASX last week. The company says that its “Clever Buoy” shark detection sonar is now ready for commercialization after successfully completing a trial at the iconic Bondi beach and receiving endorsement from  the Australian Professional Ocean Lifeguard Association. 

Blackham Resources have been furiously bolstering their gold resources at the Matilda Gold project in Wiluna on the eve of production which now looks imminent following the granting of a number of key approvals. In an extraordinarily good deal Blackham just paid $1.5m for a calcine tailings stockpile that has around $100m worth of gold in it - and Jorc compliant too. 

There’s an old saying that everyone’s a genius with the benefit of hindsight. Looking back now it doesn’t seem that hard to understand why new Shark deterrent and detection company Shark Mitigation Systems jumped 30% above its listing price last week following on from its admission to the ASX on Thursday. The company's share price touched 26c last week after listing at 20c.

ASX listed Alterra are on the hunt for dairy land in WA suitable for a new style of dairy farming known as System 5. System 5 works on the theory that if cows are made comfortable and not exposed to extreme heat and cold and not made to walk many kilometres a day to be milked or get feed, then they will produce up to 50% more milk.

The European Commission’s Cosmetic Products Notification Portal has approved ASX listed MGC Pharma’s unique cannabis based skin care and cosmetic line to be sold in Europe. The approval marks a major milestone in the company’s strategy to distribute its MGC Derma Cannabidiol based cosmetic products throughout Europe via its partner network and online portal. 

Gold explorer Terrain Minerals has unearthed some exciting historic drilling results at Wilson’s Patch, about 3km from its Great Western Project just out of Leonora. The best results were 5m @ 4.2 g/t  gold from just 10m deep,  8m @ 3.89 g/t,  3m @ 6.56 g/t from just 22m, 7m @ 9.69 g/t which included a 1m intersection grading an impressive 33.6 g/t gold. 

With only months to go before leaping into production in Wiluna, Blackham Resources have moved to de-risk the start up phase of the project by forward selling 20 000 ounces of gold at AUD$1701 an ounce.The company has a “Put” option over another 20 000 ounces that will allow them to sell gold at AUD$1575 even if the spot price drops below that figure.

Research house Pac Partners have tipped ATM player Stargroup's shares to reach 8.1c in the next 12 months, more than double their current price of 3.8c per share. Pac have undertaken an analysis of the company’s predicted forward earnings after tax and discounted them back to get a net present value of $33.4m worth of free cash likely to be generated.

Troy Resources have re-negotiated a debt deal with an excellent outcome that will free up cash to further develop their Karouni Gold Mine resource in South America. Karouni re-wrote the playbook when Troy managed to take the project from vacant land to producing gold bars in just 2.5 years having built the $130m mine in 9 months. it now produces gold at an amazing USD$412 an ounce. 

Accomplished base metals explorer Sipa Resources has experienced a breakthrough in their exploration activities at the Akelikongo project in Uganda. The company recently reported the discovery of an 11 meter mineralized zone that intersected matrix to semi-massive sulphides, potentially opening up a new high grade nickel/copper target area.

You might be forgiven for thinking commodities such as gold and Lithium are hot right now but MGC Pharma were literally knocked over in the rush during their recent medical cannabis capital raising. They went to market for just $3.5m at 4.4c a share but received $11m worth of bids into their book which was managed by Sanlam Private Wealth Pty Ltd.

There's nothing quite like the hunt for magnetic conductors in the exploration business to get the nickel and copper bulls dusting off their cheque books – especially when your ground is only 120 km from the goliath Nova Bollinger nickel find. Legend Mining have split 2 conductors into 5 with new ground surveys and are now planning to drill test them this month.

Hammer Metals have paid just $83 000 in cash and shares to secure an exciting copper/gold/cobalt exploration project near their Mt Isa operations that boasts historic drill results of up to 19m at 1.27% Copper, 0.38% Cobalt and 0.7g/t gold including 6m @3.45% Copper, 0.32% Cobalt and 2.0g/t Gold. It is just 16km west of CuDeco's goliath Rocklands mine. 

ASX listed medical cannabis company MGC Pharma has spread its wings into the Czech Republic after inking a deal to acquire Panax Pharma, a company that holds a medical cannabis breeding license in that country. Most licenses restrict the amount of THC in the plant however Panax comes with a license that is considerably more generous with regard to THC, potentially opening up new opportunities for MGC Pharma.

Blackham Resources have been working overtime to get their resource at the Matilda Gold project in Wiluna upgraded and ready for production expected to start as soon as next quarter – and they rarely miss when they put a drill hole down. Latest results are headlined by an 8.7 metre intersection grading 8.99 grams per tonne gold which included a 6m @ 11.95 g/t gold.

Stargroup has easily placed the 16% of its stock held by retiring director David Dickinson in an oversubscribed on market book build managed by the company’s Executive Chairman and CEO Todd Zani that raised $1.78m. Stargroup's two major shareholders, Mr Zani and Arthur Ognenis stumped up half a million dollars to support the book build.

Unique Australian shark deterrent and detection company Shark Mitigation Systems have raised $3.5m and will officially list on the ASX today at 10am. The company are seeking to further commercialize two exciting new shark deterrent technologies that have been partnered by Google and Optus and researched by the University of Western Australia.  

Neometals have signed a global license to deploy the technology they plan to use at the goliath Barrambie Titanium Project in W.A. Neometals says their proprietary process has the potential to bring the cost at Barrambie to produce a tonne of titanium dioxide down to around US$572 per tonne from a more traditional industry standard price of up to US$2300 per tonne. 

Red Mountain Mining's strategic funding partner for their Batangas Gold project in the Philippines, Bluebird Merchant Ventures, has listed in London after raising GBP1.675m. AUD$1.7m of that money will now flow to Red Mountain Mining to complete the DFS at Batangas, achieve final permiting for the project and to drill out some high grade gold targets.

An ill-considered, ill-advised and poorly executed plan to replace the Directors of Drake Resources failed to even secure the votes of the people that proposed it this week. A motion to roll the Drake board garnered just 3,333,666 out of the 432,477,198 votes cast. Neither the proponents or the proposed new directors attended the meeting to argue their case. 

Dairy industry upstart and carbon plantation manger Alterra have wasted no time in clearing the decks of all debt after the sale of their NZ forestry assets for approximately $3.2m. With $2.4m in cash and equivalents and $2.8m in annual forrestly income, the company is now well placed to pursue its intriguing new "System 5" dairy farming method.

Market darling Blackham Resources has again produced a solid set of drill numbers at Wiluna in the same week that much heralded Geologist Bruce Kendall was appointed Chief Geologist. Mr Kendall added a million ounces to the Stockman VMS project, a million ounces to the Sunrise Dam Gold mine and was named Prospector of the Year by AMEC in 2012. 

ATM machine upstart Stargroup say they are now paying off the capital invested in each ATM machine in just 15 months due to massive increases in revenues and solid average transactions per machine. The company says it smashed its previous best quarterly ATM revenue record last quarter by a whopping 65% to post its 9th consecutive record quarter. 

ASX listed Alterra, formally known as Carbon Conscious, is now debt free and have an additional $2m in cash to pursue new opportunities after settling the sale of their New Zealand forestry plantations for AUD$3.2m. The company is now looking to expand its agri-business by bringing a new concept of dairy farming known as “System 5” to W.A.

Having established its credentials as a mining company capable of finding significant mineral deposits over the last 2 or 3 decades, Perth based Sipa Resources can afford to think big. This week they will kick off a drilling campaign at their Ugandan project looking for a big base load source of nickel and copper at the Akelikongo prospect.