Matt Birney

Tyranna Resources has been steadily increasing its equity in the Western Gawler Craton JV with partner WPG Resources who owns the nearby Challenger gold mine. The parties are now in discussions about toll treating ore from their Jumbuck project at Challenger, creating a possible fast track to production for the junior explorer Tyranna. Drilling will commence at the Campfire Bore prospect soon ahead of a feasibility study.

Western Australia’s proposed Lithium Valley concept that could see Western Australia grab a larger share of the $213bn lithium-based battery value chain is under threat from the Federal Government’s proposed moves to limit R&D funding. Limiting the annual R&D rebates to $4m could make Australia noncompetitive with other parts of the world, according to Lithium Australia.

Venus Metals has announced exceptional upgrades from preliminary metallurgical test work on vanadium ore samples taken from its Youanmi project in the Murchison region of W.A. Results show that vanadium pentoxide grades effectively double from about 0.7% in-situ to 1.4% with simple crushing and magnetic separation of ore composites into concentrates. The company reports that ongoing test work is underway to increase recoveries of vanadium, titanium and iron.

Southern Gold has been granted two interesting looking exploration tenements over the large Beopseongpo gold-silver epithermal target in South Korea’s Jeolla Province, which hosts the operating Eunsan-Moisan gold mine. Recent rock chip sampling at Beopseongpo, which has a strike length of 4km, returned grades of up to 21.8g/t gold and 19g/t silver from float material and 3g/t gold and 1g/t silver from outcrop.

Hot Chili has reported shallow, high grade copper drilling results from its maiden RC drilling program at the El Fuego project area in central Chile. Assays showed intersections up to 19m @ 2.0% copper from 61m depth and 15m @ 1.7% copper from 80m down-hole at the San Antonio copper mine prospect. The ore system strikes over 700m and has a higher grade plunge component.

ASX listed explorer Emu NL has found traces of a gold monster in northern Chile after it drilled through a 163m gold mineralised system, albeit at low grades at this stage. The company has discovered a substantial, epithermal precious metal system at its Vidalita prospect in the lucrative Maricunga precious metals belt and the hunt is now on for the mother lode.

Classic Minerals has teamed up with CSIRO to study the potential correlation of large tree sizes to major gold deposits at the Forrestania Gold Project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. The Australian Government’s Innovation Connections grant and CSIRO will fund the majority of the six month project that could allow rapid generation of new targets without ground disturbing exploration in the future.

ASX listed Legend Mining will pepper the southern part of its promising Rockford project in the Fraser Range with 150 aircore drill holes totalling about 10,000m. The fresh program will target a number of exciting looking electromagnetic conductors and other aeromagnetic/gravity features in the at the Project. Legend is planning to carry out further exploration at the Area D Prospect following geophysical, geological and geochemical data hits.

Myanmar Metals has identified distinct zones of unexpected cobalt, nickel and copper mineralisation at its Bawdwin deposit in central Myanmar by reassessing drill sample assay data returned over the past 12 months. Best results include a 27m intersection grading 0.16% cobalt, 0.84% copper and 1.74% lead from 164m. This included 5.5m @ 0.39% cobalt, 3.25% copper, 116g/t silver and 1.03% nickel.