Matt Birney

Hot Chili has extended the thick, high-grade copper-gold core of mineralisation at its Cuerpo 3 deposit at the Cortadera porphyry discovery in Chile with a massive, 350 metre intersection grading 0.6% copper and 0.2g/t gold. The company recently completed a $12.1 million capital raise to help it develop what it says is one of the South American country’s most significant copper-gold porphyry finds of the past decade.

King River Resources has outlined an update on its PFS work for the Speewah specialty metals project in the Kimberley region of WA, where it recently flagged a potential capital cost reduction by USD$152m to USD$524m. According to recommendations by consulting firm Como Engineers, the reduction could be achieved by reducing mining rates that are more aligned with a standard-size acid plant leaching circuit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.