Matt Birney

Meeka Metals has received positive results from test work at its Cascade Valley rare earths project near Esperance with up to 90.4 per cent of the elements recovered in the less than 20 micrometre fraction. The company says cheap and simple screening and hydro-cyclone classification can be applied to discard the coarse fraction greater than 20 micrometres and remove up to 65.5 per cent of the mass whilst retaining up to 90.4 per cent of the rare earth elements.

AVZ Minerals has delivered a suite of broad lithium intersections including 144.5m at 1.75 per cent from 13.5m and 172.3m going 1.57 per cent from 48.5m at its monster Manono hard-rock lithium and tin project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Four more extensional diamond drill holes have been knocked over during a probe at its centrepiece Roche Dure deposit as the company looks to bolster its battery metal inventory.

ASX-listed Empire Energy has kicked another goal in the Beetaloo sub-basin after casing and cementing the horizontal section of its Carpentaria-3H gas well in the Northern Territory in just 2 days. The play sets the asset up for a December reservoir fracking program where the company will look to harvest some of the zone’s 500 trillion cubic feet of gas.

St George Mining has entered into a memorandum of understanding with Shanghai Jayson New Energy Materials to pursue lithium business opportunities based on the potential of the explorer’s Mt Alexander project. According to the agreement, the two companies will establish a strategic partnership to consider working together on investment and offtake opportunities at Mt Alexander where St George has discovered high-grade lithium-bearing pegmatites along a 15km corridor near Leonora.

A fresh review of JV partners Triangle Energy Global and Pilot Energy’s Cliff Head oil reservoirs suggests the assets could hold 9.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – a 50 per cent increase on initial projections. The producer’s oil fields are currently pumping out roughly 700 barrels of oil each day but once exhausted the aim is to use them to store carbon produced from power generation and industrial activities.

St George Mining has secured financial support for a drill campaign at its Mt Alexander lithium project after a global battery minerals company provided a $2 million cornerstone commitment. The explorer’s recent placement received commitments of more than $7 million including $2.04 million from Shanghai Jayson New Energy Materials – a significant supplier to the emerging clean energy sector and the world’s leading producer of cathode precursor materials for lithium-ion batteries.

Newly listed explorer Octava Minerals has outlined a suite of new pegmatite targets at its Pinnacle Well lithium prospect in the Pilbara region of Western Australia after a field reconnaissance program. The campaign was headlined by the detection of a 1.5km long east-west running outcrop about 10km north of Global Lithium’s 10.5 million tonne Archer deposit.

Classic Minerals has received approval to build a key piece of infrastructure for its gold processing plant at the company’s Kat Gap project in the Goldfields with a water pipeline getting the green light. The water bore is located near the main haul road 1100m from the processing plant that will simplify the pumping process. The pipeline will be placed above ground so limited additional infrastructure will be required.

Drill testing at Meeka Metals’ Murchison gold project has intersected a new zone of shallow high-grade oxide gold at the St Anne’s deposit, prompting the company to defer its planned release of St Anne’s initial mineral resource until the March quarter next year. The company says the new discovery remains open to the north and depth and has named it the Brassie lode.

Multicommodity explorer CZR Resources is ramping up its gold hunt in the Mallina Basin, home to DeGrey’s 8.5-million-ounce gold discovery, in Western Australia’s Pilbara goldfields. The company has commenced a ground gravity survey at its Croydon project targeting intrusion-related gold mineralisation where previous drilling has unearthed 8m running at 10.2 g/t from 135m.

Mineral processing test work has confirmed the ability for Podium Minerals to produce a viable platinum group metal flotation concentrate suitable for smelter feeds from ore at its Parks Reef project. The company says additional downstream processing developments have also proven that high metal recovery of all eight metals found at the site can be achieved using atmospheric leaching.

K2fly has landed another big fish with a world-leading steel and mining multinational company signing up for two products from the Subiaco-based software provider’s Mineral Resource Governance platform. The five-year agreement with ArcelorMittal Mining UK, the mining arm of the ArcelorMittal group, is worth almost $2 million and adds to sales in the past week to tier 1 miners Rio Tinto and Mineral Resources.

Ultra-high temperature test work aimed at evaluating the suitability of ASX-listed Quantum Graphite’s coarse flake graphite in the production of long-duration energy devices has come up trumps. The program forms part of a jointly held partnership with Melbourne-based company Sunlands and aims to produce thermal energy storage battery cells at an industrial scale using Quantum’s ore as a feedstock.

Construction at Adriatic Metals’ Vares high-grade silver project in Bosnia and Herzegovina is picking up speed as the company prepares to bring the project's namesake underground mine and processing facility online next year. Adriatic says the project is now at the mid-way point and importantly remains on schedule and budget to deliver the first concentrate around September 2023.

With its Goongarrie tenements renewed for a further five years, explorer Zuleika Gold has assembled boots on ground in its hunt for gold and nickel within the company’s under-explored tenure in WA’s goldfields. The company has commenced a 740-sample soil geochemistry program designed to infill previous geochemical sampling and extend the coverage over the 20km-long prospective greenstone belt.

ASX-listed Aurumin has entered a competitive ballot process to expand its footprint around the company’s flagship Sandstone operations with a number of the 15 tenements up for grabs located in the adjacent area. The ballots in the Sandstone area are a result of compulsory partial surrenders required by Section 65 of the Mining Act 1978 and contain applications from several parties including tenements adjacent to the Central Sandstone project and north of Youanmi.

White Cliff Minerals has concluded a maiden 49-hole, 1861m air-core drilling program at its Hines Hill rare earths project in WA’s Wheatbelt region. The campaign follows the discovery of a pair of potentially mineralised magnetic features and the return of soil sample results grading up to 550 parts per million total rare earth oxides.

Multi-metals explorer Conico has confirmed anomalous levels of copper, nickel, gold and platinum group elements at its Ryberg project in Greenland after receiving assays from its latest drill campaign. A total of 11 diamond drill holes were completed across four prospects during the Greenland field season, targeting a host of elements at the company’s Sortekap, Miki, Cascata and Pyramid prospects.

ASX-listed Classic Minerals is forging ahead with earthworks for its tailings storage facility after its Kat Gap project in WA’s Goldfields received the green light from the State regulator earlier this month. The final approvals bring Classic a step closer to its goal of evolving from explorer to producer and it’s going full-steam ahead for a prompt completion of that journey.

Infinity Mining has wrapped up its maiden RC drilling campaign at its Tambourah South lithium prospect south west of Marble Bar with visible lepidolite and spodumene spotted in 18 of the 21 holes sunk for 1812m. In total 41 individual pegmatite intervals were logged varying from 1m to 35m in width. Most contained the visual lithium minerals lepidolite and spodumene.

Aurumin has increased its potential gold footprint by entering into a binding heads of agreement with Westar Resources to purchase the historical Birrigrin mining centre, 70km north of its Sandstone operations. The Birrigrin tenements contain 39 mapped shafts dating back to the early 1900s with recorded production grades up to 196 grams per tonne gold, however the site remains largely untested at depth by drilling.

Diversified metals company ABx Group has tabled a maiden 3.94 million tonne rare earths resource at its Deep Leads – Rubble Mound channel area within its northern Tasmanian portfolio. The inventory offers an average total rare earths oxide grade of 918 parts per million and ABx expects the asset’s footprint to balloon from more drilling next year.

On the back of a promising auger drilling program and electromagnetic survey, minerals explorer Emu NL is spinning the drill bit in its maiden RC campaign at its Viper project in WA’s South West. Viper comprises a 45sq km lease about 8km north-east of Jerramungup and Emu’s campaign will comprise 600m of shallow drilling to a maximum depth of 150m.

Aruma Resources’ latest foray with the drill bit at its Mt Deans project in WA’s Goldfields has come up trumps after latching onto more high-grade lithium and rubidium within lepidolite-rich pegmatite veins. Assay results from the first two holes in the 21-hole program returned 7m at 2.03 per cent combined lithium-oxide and rubidium-oxide.

ASX-listed explorer Infinity Mining has beefed up its portfolio with the acquisition of a 250 square kilometre land parcel prospective for gold and lithium in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The company says several tenements within the package are contiguous to its Tambourah South lithium project where a recent rock chip sampling program returned grades of up to 2.6 per cent lithium oxide.

Medical technology company Radiopharm Theranostics says new data released by Imperial College London from a phase 2 trial it conducted on the company’s F-18 Pivalate radiotracer adds weight to its belief the product can be used to monitor brain cancer – a potentially huge market because up to 40 per cent of cancer patients develop metastatic cancer in the brain.

Godolphin Resources has identified new mineralisation at its Yeoval copper-gold prospect near Orange in NSW after a review of historical drill core pulled by a previous explorer in 2008. The company says its review of a pair of legacy samples unveiled visible copper sulphide mineralisation outside of the operation’s existing 12.8 million tonne resource.

Melbourne-based Radiopharm Theranostics has reached an agreement with Australia's Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation for the supply of a vital ingredient required for its fight against cancer. The ingredient is a short-lived radioactive isotope called non-carrier-added lutetium-177, or Lu-177, that has promising properties for treating certain cancers. Lu-177 will be used in an upcoming trial of patients with lung cancer.

The next big discovery will be the focus of this week’s RIU Resurgence Conference where a host of ASX-listed companies will promote their activities to an investor audience across a two-day event in Perth. Hosted by Vertical Events, this year’s presentations include a diverse group of ASX-listed companies with a variety of portfolios from emerging battery technologies to the latest in resources exploration around the world including lithium, gold, rare earth elements and more.

Subiaco-based mining software provider K2fly has signed Mineral Resources to a three-year contract worth $1.75 million. The deal will cover Mineral Resources’ iron ore and lithium operations and it comes hard on the heels of K2fly expanding its work with another tier 1 miner, Rio Tinto. The company’s software products aim to support clients’ ESG issues.

American West Metals has unveiled a suite of new targets at its Copper Warrior project in Utah, USA after completing an induced polarisation survey at the site. The company says one of the anomalies tips the scales at 850m x 570m and returned grades as high as 3.3 per cent copper in geochemical sampling.

Further flow rate pump test results from Galan Lithium’s Hombre Muerto West lithium brine project in Argentina are believed to support the company’s ambitions to ramp-up pilot plant production to 4ktpa lithium carbon equivalent. With work progressing at a breakneck pace on multiple fronts, Galan is set to ring in the new year by delivering on its definitive feasibility study by the end of the first quarter.