Matt Birney

Multi-element explorer Tambourah Metals has been granted two tenements prospective for lithium, solidifying its Russian Jack project, 40km south of Nullagine in WA. The dual grant secures nearly half the intended final package, with the rest still under application. The company notes more than 320 square kilometres of the underexplored Split Rock super-suite is captured within the final project size.

Oil explorer 88 Energy is making progress as it drills towards the 8000-foot reservoir targets at its potentially company making Merlin-2 well in Alaska. The company is chasing a possible 652 million barrel of oil resource as the it follows up on its 2021 Merlin-1 discovery. Merlin-2 spudded on the 7th of March and has been drilled to 2,005 feet. The surface casing has been installed and cemented in addition to the blow out preventer being tested.

Aldoro Resources could be closer to discovering lithium after intersecting pegmatites across multiple levels at its Niobe project, about 70 kilometres from Mount Magnet in Western Australia. According to the company, the recently completed drill program punched out 65-holes and struck pegmatites in almost all of them, confirming historical results and closing the campaign on a high.

Gold-focused Classic Minerals has cleared the final hurdle in its race to develop the Kat Gap gold mine after receiving regulatory approval for its mining operations. With its mining proposal and closure plan now given the green light Classic can progress to full-scale mining. The company is continuing the mining of a 49,000-tonne bulk sample that commenced last year.

Metal Hawk and JV partner, Western Areas have significantly ramped up exploration, with a maiden diamond drill campaign at their Kanowna East project near Kalgoorlie intersecting 220m of nickel bearing ultramafic rocks near the well-endowed Poseidon owned Silver Swan nickel mine. Western Areas has a 75 per cent earn in agreement by spending $7 million over five years across Metal Hawk’s Kanowna East, Emu Lake and Fraser South projects.

Brisbane based polymetallic explorer Superior Resources has expanded its tenement portfolio to a massive 1,158 square kilometres of prospective nickel-copper-PGE ground at its Greenvale project located around 210 kilometres west-northwest of Townsville in Queensland. The company believes the newly granted exploration leases hold the potential to host Voisey’s Bay or Julimar-Gonneville style magmatic sulphide systems.

King River Resources has identified a flurry of new economic and environmental improvements during its ongoing definitive feasibility study for its type 1 high purity alumina precursor processing plant. The type 1 aluminium salt precursor has shown a 5N level or 99.999 per cent purity and is considered an essential ingredient in the battery manufacturing industry.

ASX-listed ABx Group appears to have expanded its rare earths footprint in Tasmania after uncovering its fourth discovery in the region. The new prospect, called ‘Rubble Mound’ sits about six kilometres east of the company’s Deep Leads rare earths project and boasts grades of up to 1,620 parts per million total rare earth oxides. The company says early indications suggest an extensive queue of targets could sit between the two zones.

ASX-listed junior explorer Twenty Seven Co is gearing up for another round of auger drilling at its Yarbu gold project located approximately 160km northeast of Southern Cross in Western Australia. The campaign is designed to hit priority targets and infill anomalies detected in last year’s exploration. It plans to sink a further 330 holes with assays expected in late May.

Amidst a tight global market Technology Metals Australia has produced high vanadium recoveries up to 95 per cent in test work as it plans to merge its two deposits and deliver the world’s next larg

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining or KalGold has defined strong, continuous gold anomalism bordering the company’s La Mascotte gold prospect, part of its flagship Bulong Taurus gold project near Kalgoorlie in WA. The identified trend runs for over 2.3 kilometres and extends from the Turnpike prospect in the west through La Mascotte and continues eastward, supporting the company’s hypothesis of a large, connected gold system at Bulong Taurus.

The gold hits continue to roll in from Horizon Minerals’ Golden Ridge project near Kalgoorlie in the heart of Western Australia’s Goldfields. Results from the latest round of RC drilling have included 2 metres returning a tantalising 26.11 grams per tonne gold from 69m. The company appears to have also tapped into a nickel-rich ultramafic that lies only 8km north of the Blair nickel mine.

PolarX has expansion plans for its high-grade copper Caribou Dome deposit in Alaska. It sees potential for increasing both the average grade and tonnage of its existing resource already holding 2.8Mt of ore grading a respectable 3.1 per cent copper. The company says recently reported results have prompted a full review of the resource model and a new drilling campaign.

ASX-listed Askari Metals has turned up an encouraging 2 grams per tonne gold after sifting through the soils of its Burracoppin gold project in WA’s Wheatbelt region. The Burracoppin project was historically mined in the 1930s and in some old workings produced gold grades of up to 49 g/t gold. Askari is now redefining a prospective gold corridor that looks like it could be over 3km long.

In its quest to strengthen its in-country ties, Infinity Lithium has appointed Ramón Jiménez Serrano to the role of CEO of the company’s wholly owned Spanish subsidiary, Extremadura New Energies. Mr Serrano has spent 17 years in leadership roles with major Spanish companies that have an industrial focus and are aligned to sustainable energy transitions.

American West Metals continues to deliver at its West Desert project in Utah after its third diamond drill hole intersected over 100 metres of visual zinc and copper mineralisation from just 20m downhole. According to the company, the initial results appear to confirm the continuity of shallow base metals in the first two holes and support the projects open pit mining potential.

The rods have started spinning for ASX-listed Tambourah Metals at its namesake gold project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. The reverse circulation campaign will drill 2,000 metres over 19 holes in two high priority areas and will test extensions of known and historical gold mineralisation. Targets include the Kushmattie prospect, Federal Mine workings and geophysical targets identified through interpretation last year.

Neometals has joined forces with a subsidiary of luxury vehicle juggernaut, Mercedes-Benz to design and construct a proposed lithium-ion battery recycling facility in Southern Germany. The collaboration will see Primobius, a joint venture partner of Neometals, team up with the car manufacturer’s subsidiary, LICULAR GmbH. According to the company, the pair are in ‘advanced discussions’ for the 2,500 tonne per annum plant.

ASX-listed Image Resources has picked up an astounding 84Mt of contained total heavy mineral sands and a staggering 75Mt of contained valuable “heavy” minerals in a $12 million cash deal with Sheffield. The new project comes gift wrapped with a massive 5.8Bt mineral resource going 1.4 per cent total heavy minerals and represents an incredible 20-fold increase in the overall tonnes accessible by dry mining for Image.

ASX-listed K2fly has inked a $768,000 three-year contract with Freeport-McMoRan to provide its unique cloud-based “RCubed” mineral resource governance platform across all twelve of Freeport’s global operations. Freeport is the 16th client to use K2fly’s RCubed software that K2fly says is the only commercial solution of its type available anywhere in the world.

Classic Minerals has unexpectedly uncovered what appears to be gold-bearing river gravels at the company’s Kat Gap project in Western Australia. An onsite crush and pan of the river gravels yielded some visible gold in the dish for the explorer during the ongoing bulk sample mining operation at its flagship project. The bulk sampling is expected to run for the next six weeks.

Trailblazing biotech Memphasys has achieved a crucial step in the rollout of its IVF sperm separation technology after winning a draft ISO for its quality management system for manufacturing medical devices. Memphasys said the ISO 13485 certificate will assist with selling medical devices in high regulatory markets such as Australia, Europe and China and it is an important step for product accreditation and acceptance by customers.

With inflation rising across the globe and western economies imposing sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, Goldman Sachs, of the world's largest investment banks, has hiked the prices of its commodities forecasts, citing supply disruptions that it says could drive the price of gold towards US$2,500 per ounce this year.

Image Resources has tabled a timely resource update on seven of the eight projects recently acquired in WA’s historic Eneabba mineral sands mining district, located 275km north of Perth. The total mineral resources for all seven stands at 199Mt grading 2.8 per cent THM with 5.5Mt of contained heavy minerals at 84 per cent VHM.

ASX-listed explorers Okapi Resources is poised to unleash the diamond drill bit at its Enmore gold project in northern New South Wales after scoring a string of “exceptional” hits in a maiden drilling campaign at the venture late last year. The 11-hole program will follow up on previous work at the Sunnyside prospect, that the company says remains open at depth and along strike.

St George Mining has confirmed the potential to produce two commercially viable concentrates with metallurgical test work displaying nickel grades of 11.5 per cent with 3.32 grams per tonne palladium, 0.65 g/t platinum and 0.61 per cent cobalt and copper at 27.8 per cent with 12.4 g/t palladium, 1.9 g/t platinum and 2.6 g/t gold. Importantly no deleterious elements that could affect the saleability of the concentrates were identified.

White Cliff Minerals is set to offload a pair of its non-core assets after entering into a deal with GenX Resources to farm-out its Coronation Dam and Ghan Well nickel-cobalt projects in Western Australia. According to the company, the impending transaction reinforces its strategy of focussing on its wholly owned lithium and rare earths projects in the state.

ASX-listed Barton Gold has plenty of drill targets to go after in South Australia’s Gawler Craton after processing of gravity survey data has confirmed previously identified priority structural targets. The findings have corroborated the explorer’s geological understanding of the Tarcoola project and will assist in refining its targets for an upcoming drilling campaign.

Quantum Graphite’s plan to manufacture thermal energy cells using its own graphite deposit in SA for retrofitting coal-fired power stations has jumped to the next stage. A newly commissioned report has suggested its technology, that is jointly being developed with Sunlands Co, is one of the most promising of the available long duration thermal energy storage solutions.

Meeka Gold Limited has confirmed the presence of rare earths mineralisation with wide hits grading above 1000ppm total rare earths from aircore drilling completed last year at the company’s Circle Valley project in WA. The aircore chips were initially only tested for gold however handheld XRF analysis displayed elevated rare earths spurring on a multi-element re-assay that confirmed the rare earths mineralisation.

Triangle Energy’s new board has laid out its plan for the road ahead since taking control of the Perth Basin operator, focusing firmly on the $11 million final shipment from the BP Kwinana facility in June. The company has just completed a strategic review that aims to preserve and increase production across its portfolio of assets.

ASX-listed Okapi Resources has its sights set on a drilling campaign at its Rattlesnake prospect after a 28-piece rock chip sampling program yielded grades as high as 1.24 per cent triuranium octox