Michael Philipps

ASX-listed Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has highlighted a gold-mineralised corridor with a strike length of nearly 7km following reconnaissance fieldwork across its Zelica project in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields region. The company has recorded high-grade gold mineralisation in near-surface quartz veining, including results of up to 39.6 grams per tonne gold and 6.44g/t gold from rock chip samples at its West Nest prospect.

Terrain Minerals has added a Queensland operation to its raft of WA projects after lodging tenement applications for about 2500 square kilometres of highly-prospective ground near the Cracow gold mine. It says its extensive “Biloela” package includes at least two known historic copper mines, in addition to copper and gold targets first identified by mining giants Rio Tinto, Gold Fields and Newcrest Mining.

Brightstar Resources is primed to join the ranks of Western Australian gold producers, with mining set to begin in August at its Selkirk open-pit gold mine that holds 30,000 tonnes of ore going more than 6 grams per tonne gold. Brightstar picked up the operation that forms part of the Menzies gold project after completing its successful merger with Kingwest Resources last month.

Infinity Mining has highlighted rare earths at its Victor Bore project, with two samples from a recent reverse-circulation campaign returning results of more than 1000 parts per million TREO. Of 24 samples from a drill campaign in WA’s Central Goldfields, one returned a 1m hit at 1018ppm TREO from 20m, while a second recorded another 1m intercept at a solid 1582ppm TREO from 53m.

Meeka Metals has tabled an independent maiden resource of 98 million tonnes grading 890 parts per million total rare earths oxide for 21,560 tonnes of neodymium-praseodymium metal at its Circle Valley project in Esperance. The new resource, based on 12,401m of large-diameter air-core drilling, is contained within an optimised pit shell and above a 430ppm TREO minus cerium oxide cutoff.

Lindian Resources says it has made significant progress on the optimum design for its processing plant at the company’s Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi, while the mine design and planning are being scoped. The stage-one plant is based on processing an initial throughput of 220,000 tonnes of material per annum to produce a monazite concentrate before expanding to 440,000 tonnes a year.

Auric Mining is a step closer to a maiden gold pour from its Jeffreys Find project near Norseman, with the first 30,000 tonnes of gold ore set for processing once transported to Greenfields Mill in Coolgardie. The company says mining at the site has been ongoing for four weeks and it has triple road trains secured to haul the first ore to Coolgardie.

Infinity Mining has expanded its foothold in WA’s East Pilbara by nearly 100 square kilometres after acquiring three new tenements to bring its total holding in the region to more than 780sq km. The sites were bought from TasEx Geological Services and include ground considered prospective for volcanic-hosted massive sulphides and shear-hosted gold deposits right next door to Infinity’s Tambourah South lithium project.

Everest Metals is on a mission to add copper to its Revere gold project near Meekatharra, with a diamond drill campaign kicking off just 50km south-east of Sandfire Resources’ DeGrussa copper-gold project. The 1000m program has been designed to test for volcanic-hosted massive sulphides that have been modelled to occur at depth and will include three deep diamond holes sunk to about 350m.