Matt Birney

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.

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.

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.

St George Mining has delineated further extensions to the nickel/copper mineralisation in an ongoing diamond drilling program at its emerging Investigators prospect located near Leonora in the WA Goldfields region. Recent exploration intersected wide, massive sulphide intersections of between 5-6 metres true width and returned portable XRF analyses averaging from 8.0 - 8.8% nickel and 4.5 – 5.0% copper in the massive sulphide intercepts.

Ore sorting could be the panacea for conglomerate gold projects that are notoriously hard to drill after Novo Resources reported positive results from trials on bulk samples from its Comet Well conglomerate gold project near Karratha. The company said that ore sorting rejected up to 99.7% of the waste materials, with visual and X-ray examination of the ore concentrates showing gold nuggets, providing encouraging feedback from the trials.

Legend Mining has enhanced the prospectivity of its emerging Area D prospect in the Fraser Range region of WA, by locating 17 conductors from an innovative moving loop electromagnetic survey program at the Rockford project. The surveys were designed to test for potential accumulations of massive sulphide mineralisation associated with 4 zones of coherent and anomalous nickel-copper-cobalt assays returned from regional aircore drilling programs.

MGC Pharmaceuticals has reached a partnership with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem to launch an international research hub – Cannahub - for medical cannabis in the first quarter of 2019. Cannahub will initially focus on the use of medicinal cannabis in the treatment of cancer, the effectiveness of traditional and medicinal cannabis combination treatments and drug delivery systems.

Neometals Ltd has commenced an update of its 2009 DFS for the Barrambie vanadium-titanium-magnetite project located near Sandstone in WA, citing a 4-fold increase in vanadium prices since that initial study was conducted. The update will examine development options including offshore processing of the crushed ores, onsite production of a high-grade concentrate for direct sale and potential refining opportunities to generate premium vanadium chemicals.

Sky and Space Global has signed binding MoUs with Brazilian telcos Inovsat Telecom and AltaRede Corporation to determine how its nano-satellites can increase the reliability, accessibility and affordability of their telecommunications services. The company expects to convert both MoUs into definitive agreements with commercial terms following the launch of the first batch of Pearls nano-satellites in 2019.