Announcements

Lithium Australia has reached in principle agreement with a battery researcher for the development of advanced silicon anodes that could significantly increase the energy density of lithium-ion batteries. The company is planning to establish facilities for the development of the new graphite/silicon anodes at its VSPC plant in Brisbane with operations starting under the terms of an MOU.

Strike Energy’s $16.1m all-scrip takeover bid for Perth Basin-focused oil and gas company UIL Energy has been found to be both fair and reasonable by an independent expert. The company also said its Jaws-1, deep coal seam gas well in South Australia is now starting to flow gas continuously with regular bursts of up to 100,000 cubic feet per day and gas flows continuing to build.

Hammer Metals has produced some exceptional copper and gold recoveries from initial metallurgical test work studies on ores from its Jubilee prospect, located in the Mount Isa mining district of north-western Queensland. The company achieved exceptional copper recoveries of 98% and even managed gold recoveries of 80%, essentially as a bonus credit in the final concentrate during mineral flotation test work for Jubilee.

PharmAust has signed an agreement with US company Catalent Pharma Solutions for the GMP-grade manufacture of its “Monepantel” anti-cancer drug for its upcoming clinical trials in dogs. Manufacturing the drugs to GMP standards will enable the resultant data to be admissible to the US FDA in support of new drug registration programs, a key milestone for PharmAust.

MGC Pharmaceuticals has finalised the sale of its cannabis-based cosmetics business, MGC Derma, to CannaGlobal for a 10% stake in the private Canadian cannabis investment company. MGC has also received CAD$500,000 for an initial supply order under an exclusive five-year agreement to supply cannabidiol and cosmetics materials to CannaGlobal for the manufacture of the MGC Derma range of products.

Metalicity Limited has secured nearly 2200 square kilometres of promising looking copper-gold exploration tenements over two projects in the sought after Paterson Province of the eastern Pilbara region. The new projects are surrounded by operating mines and significant mineral occurrences. The company is in the process of selling its zinc and lithium interests as it shifts focus towards its copper, nickel and cobalt assets.

ASX listed upstart telco Vonex’s success in growing its cloud PBAX business continues unabated with the company now boasting 25,000 registered users as at the end of October 2018, up 25% from the same time in 2017. Further growth is expected as the second phase of Vonex’s very successful marketing campaign across Australian capital cities hits its stride.

Australian Potash has successfully intersected brines in recent deep aircore drilling at its Lake Wells sulphate of potash project located near Laverton in WA. All new drill holes ended in permeable deep sand aquifers suitable for abstracting the drainable mineral commodity. The new data should allow an upgrade of the existing resources into the measured status of classification, ahead of the company’s highly anticipated DFS.

Adriatic Metals has revealed another exceptional intersection from its Bosnian, multi-commodity play with the latest numbers from the Rupice prospect turning up a serious looking 18 metre intersection grading 17.6% zinc, 9.4% lead, 3.8g/t gold and 508g/t silver from 162m down-hole. The result is 100m up-dip from a previous high grade result and grows the mineralised footprint ahead of the company’s maiden resource estimate.

Azumah Resources has kicked off a massive 40,000m multi-target drilling campaign to be managed and funded by Perth mining investment fund Ibaera Capital. Azumah is seeking to achieve a major boost to its resource and reserve numbers at the interesting looking project as it looks to deliver a feasibility study by the end of the year.

Myanmar Metals has delineated significant extensions to the China Lode during resource development drilling at its Bawdwin base metal project in central Myanmar. The work is targeting areas outside of the existing mineral resources and those resources with lower confidence inferred status. Results included 32m @ 4.2% lead, 0.9% zinc and 91g/t silver from 81m down-hole that falls outside the current resource, but inside the optimised open pit shell.

Calidus Resources has had further success with its infill and extensional resource drilling program at the Warrawoona gold project in the Pilbara. Encouraging intersections up to 6m @ 7.61g/t gold from 16m down-hole were returned from the St George Shear prospect, whilst results including 2m @ 20.84g/t gold from 88m down-hole and 6m @ 3.82g/t gold from 93m down-hole extended the Klondyke East prospect to over 600m of strike.

Hammer Metals has achieved encouraging recoveries of up to 95.1% copper and 95.4% cobalt from its first pass metallurgical testing program at the Millennium JV project near Cloncurry in Queensland’s Mt Isa mining district. Testing of the high grade composite sample from the northern quartzite zones also recovered 81.4% of the gold together with the copper concentrate.

Sovereign Metals’ says it can make AUD$57m a year by investing AUD$67m in initial CAPEX at its Malingunde graphite deposit in Malawi. The numbers are contained in the company’s recently tabled PFS that shows off a high grade, low CAPEX operation with excellent operating margins over an initial mine life of 16 years. The project produces a pre-tax NPV of USD$201m and an IRR of 56%.

Adriatic Metals has increased its land holdings at the exciting Vares project in Bosnia, after local Government authorities approved the company’s request for major expansions to its existing concession agreement over the Rupice and Veovaca prospect areas at its 100% owned base metals play. At Rupice, the expansion takes in the region north and down plunge of a 66m thick, high grade intersection reported in October.

A Chilean-based geological consultant has completed a review that supports Emu NL’s interpretation that the Vidalita project in the highly endowed Maricunga Belt in Chile is a highly mineralised epithermal system with the potential to host a large gold-silver-base metal deposit. The review found that the high sulphidation mineralisation is likely to be largely intact due to limited erosion.

Great Southern Mining has completed a maiden inferred mineral resource estimate of 1.1 million tonnes grading 1.7g/t gold for 59,000 ounces at its flagship Mon Ami gold project near Laverton in the northern Goldfields region of WA. The newly discovered deposit is just 25km trucking distance from Gold Field’s Granny Smith gold operation, opening up the possibility of future toll treatment of ores.

Alaska-focused 88 Energy has estimated that its wholly-owned Yukon leases in the famed “North Slope” oil province could hold prospective oil resources of about 90 million barrels of oil after processing 3D seismic it acquired earlier this year. The company will generate an inversion 3D volume to further delineate and de-risk the current mapping at the leases.

Geopacific Resources has completed its DFS for the Woodlark gold project in PNG, demonstrating a high margin operation, with an initial mine life of 13 years. The project generates a post-tax NPV of $197m and an IRR of 29%, with payback just over 2 years. Woodlark will produce about 100,000 ounces of gold annually for the first 5 years at an all-in sustaining cost of just $866 per ounce.

Delecta Limited has further confirmed the high grade nature of mineralisation at the Highline project near Las Vegas in the US, with its due diligence sampling returning up to 1.46% cobalt and 31.2% copper. Geological mapping and sampling is now underway on both the underground workings and prospecting pits to gain a better understanding of the orientation and extent of the mineralisation.

Infinity Lithium is looking to either farm-out or divest its non-core Banio potash project in southern Gabon after pencilling in a maiden inferred JORC mineral resource of 1.67 billion tonnes at 16.1% potassium chloride. The project includes high grade sylvinite that includes seams at 30.7 million tonnes at 25.3% potassium chloride and may be amendable to the lower cost, in-situ leach mining method.

Artemis Resources has discovered three new gold exploration targets across its extensive land holdings near Karratha in WA, with a comprehensive geochemical soil sampling program outlining several multi-element anomalies for follow-up exploration. Rock chip sampling has outlined numerous gold occurrences, including assays up to 11.4g/t in quartz veining at the new Patterson’s Hut prospect, located just 15km north of the company’s Radio Hill processing plant.

TNG Ltd has appointed leading German metallurgical engineering company SMS Group to start front end engineering and design work for its Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project in the NT. SMS will also provide TNG with a binding fixed-priced turn-key EPC proposal for the concentrator and processing plant that will include production quantity, production rate and product quality guarantees.

Affinity Energy and Health has doubled its algae culturing capacity from 20 grams per litre to 40gpl through innovative operating procedures without incurring any additional capital or operating cost increases. The company has identified potential to further increase its algae culturing capacity to 60gpl and expects to increase algae production to more than 250 tonnes per annum with minimal capital expenditure.

Adriatic Metals has continued its run of amazing drill results from its Bosnian, multi-commodity play with the latest numbers showing a 24 metre intersection going 8.6g/t gold and 332g/t silver from 226m down-hole. It was hiding within a spectacular intercept of 42m @ 14.1% zinc, 8.4% lead, 5.7g/t gold, 245g/t silver, 1.4% copper and 34% barite from 222m at the Rupice prospect in Bosnia.

Surefire Resources has generated high grade magnetic concentrates going up to 1.46% vanadium pentoxide from simple crushing and magnetic separation metallurgical test work on fresh vanadiferous magnetite ore composites from its Unaly Hill project near Sandstone in WA. The company said the testing also successfully rejected most of the waste silica, alumina and calcium content, whilst upgrading the iron and valuable titania content of the ore composite samples.

Conglomerate gold developer Novo Resources has outlined an aggressive exploration program for its emerging Egina gold project, located near Port Hedland in the Pilbara region of WA. Over the coming months the company plans to undertake systematic bulk sampling of gold-bearing lag gravels at the project. The company will also complete ground surveying, trench mapping, regional geological mapping and conduct wide-spaced alluvial soil sampling for fine gold occurrences.

Calima Energy has contracted Precision Drilling’s Rig 379 to carry out its three well program in the Montney oil and gas play in British Columbia, Canada with drilling to get underway as soon as December. The first well to be drilled will be a vertical well to provide data and samples for measurement and analysis followed by two horizontal wells that will be fracture stimulated.

Coolgardie Minerals has swung into production near Coolgardie just a couple of months after listing on the ASX. First ores were extracted at a respectable gold grade of 3.5 grams per tonne from the company’s Geko gold mine. Mined ore will be stockpiled and then sold to Northern Star’s South Kalgoorlie operation at AUD$1650 an ounce where it will be processed.

Aspire Mining says that a proposed rail line that will link its Ovoot coking coal project in Mongolia to the proposed Kyzyl - Arts Suuri section of the Russian rail network at the border port of Arts Suuri is viable. The 238.6km rail line will cost USD$581.8m, which is in the range estimated by a scoping study completed in 2015 and comparable to the Erdenet to Ovoot feasibility study.

TNG Ltd has made it three for three with the signing of a third term sheet, this time with Switzerland’s DKSH for the titanium dioxide pigment offtake from its Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project in the Northern Territory. The company already has a binding offtake agreement with WOOJIN Metals for at least 60% of the vanadium output and a binding term sheet with Gunvor (Singapore) for iron products.

Vonex has launched its new Vonex Phone app that brings its cloud-based PABX system to the smartphone and computer desktops, allowing users to be connected to their business phone system from anywhere in the world. The company will generate revenue through a range of subscription plans with phone calls paid on a per minute or per call basis or a recurring monthly subscription which includes unlimited phone calls.