Announcements

Northern Minerals has made the leap from explorer to producer after turning out its first rare earth carbonate at the Browns Range project in the Kimberley region of WA. Both the beneficiation and hydrometallurgical circuits are now load commissioned for steady state production. The company is also hunting for additional resources of heavy rare earth mineralisation at Browns Range with a focus on the exciting Dazzler-Iceman discoveries.

Classic Minerals latest drill program near Southern Cross has delivered in spades with a spectacular 10m drill intersection going nearly an ounce to the tonne gold from just 28m deep at the rapidly advancing Kat Gap prospect. The new Kat Gap drill results included a 2m section grading a whopping 116.1g/t gold from 31m and the Lady Lila prospect also delivered 6m @ 9.57g/t gold from 26m down-hole.

King River Copper has completed a scoping study that demonstrates the potential for its Windsor project in Western Australia’s East Kimberley region. Windsor is potentially the only major fluorite deposit in Australia and according to King River’s latest scoping study, it is capable of producing positive cashflows .The company is now proceeding with a pre-feasibility study that will allow it to report ore reserves and an economic analysis.

Delecta Limited has purchased the high grade Highline cobalt-copper project from a private vendor in the emerging Goodsprings mining district, 50km southwest of Las Vegas in southern Nevada, USA. The historical mine produced cobalt up to an eye-watering 12.45% and an average copper grade of 35%. The claim area has been sitting idle for nearly a century and has seen pretty much no modern exploration.

Australian Potash could enjoy better freight costs at its Lake Wells potash project thanks to a government funded upgrade of up to 100km of the Great Central Road to the east of the town of Laverton. The company will work with the Shire of Laverton to consider the feasibility of sealing the Lake Wells access road, which would give the project a 300km all-weather bitumen sealed road to the Leonora rail-head.

Babylon Pump & Power has secured a $670,000 contract to supply and install power generation and dewatering pumping equipment for BHP for an initial six month period. Works are scheduled to begin immediately with commissioning scheduled for November 2018. The company is optimistic that the contract will continue on a rolling basis at the end of the initial term.

Spectrum Metals has paid $200,000 to buy the historical First Hit gold mine, located 50km west of Menzies in the Goldfields region of WA. The mine was last worked in 2002 and the company has defined numerous walk-up drill targets for delineating more high grade mineralisation. Spectrum will raise $600,000 to underwrite exploration of its WA gold assets, by issuing shares to sophisticated investors at 0.4c per share.

Tyranna Resources has discovered wide graphite mineralisation at sought after grades at the Yeltana prospect located only 125km from the port of Whyalla in South Australia. Results up to 21.05m @ 9.28% total graphitic carbon from 171.75m down-hole points to the deposit potentially having some scale. The company is planning to undertake mineralogical analyses of core samples for graphite flake size to assess the economic potential of the product.

ASX listed Kairos Minerals’ ongoing exploration at its Croydon project in the Pilbara region of WA has extended the strike length of the gold bearing conglomerate to over 4km after discovering visible gold in stream sediment pan samples. Further exploration being carried out includes additional stream sediment sampling, metal detecting, detailed mapping and stratigraphic RC and diamond drilling.

Calima Energy is poised to benefit from Shell’s decision to proceed with its massive CAD$40bn Canadian LNG project in British Columbia that will source gas from the Montney oil and gas formation to produce an initial 14 million tonnes of LNG per annum. Calima is planning to start drilling one vertical well in the Montney to provide data and two horizontal wells that will be placed on extended production testing before the end of this year.

BlackEarth Minerals’ final assays from drilling at the Haja deposit in southern Madagascar continue to demonstrate very thick and consistent zones of graphite mineralisation. A maiden resource estimate is due to be released next month after the company hit a 90m intersection grading 5.7%TGC. BlackEarth is in the final stages of planning a trenching program expected to start later this month.

St George Mining has reported that recent down hole electromagnetic surveying at the Investigators prospect has outlined several strong, new off-hole conductors that it considers highly prospective for defining massive nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation. The new conductors are located down-plunge of a previously intersected mineralised ultramafic rock sequence and may indicate the potential for a significant extension to the narrow, but high-grade mineralisation previously located at Investigators.

Coolgardie Minerals has reported that the initial grade control drilling program conducted from surface at its Geko gold mine near Bullabulling, returned a number of significant intersections grading above 4g/t gold that have extended the high grade supergene oxide mineralisation beyond the limits of the current pit design. The company will produce its first gold ore later this month, to be delivered to Northern Star’s South Kalgoorlie plant for toll treatment.

ASX listed Blackstone Minerals’ phase two IP survey has identified new large-scale cobalt targets at its Little Gem project in British Columbia that are bigger and stronger than the anomalies found during the first phase. The new targets, which are more than 1km long, are associated with the previously producing “Jewel” gold-silver-copper mine located 1.1km northeast of Little Gem.

Nzuri Copper has extended its copper mineralisation to over 270m of strike and a vertical depth of 150m, after the latest drilling at its Monwezi 2 prospect in the DRC. Best results of up to 7.1m @ 0.82% copper from 73.9m down-hole were returned. Nzuri also generated an Exploration Target for Monwezi 2 ranging between 1.0 - 2.5 million tonnes grading between 0.8 - 1.5% copper.

Tyranna Resources’ stream sampling has identified two encouraging cobalt-copper-zinc anomalies at its newly acquired Goodsprings cobalt and base metals project in Nevada. The company will carry out a geophysics program later this month before drilling up to five holes at the Whale trend to confirm the oreshoot, intersect potential mineralisation and drill through the postulated east-west fault.

Lithium Australia has entered an agreement with a private exploration company to acquire 3 tenements at the Youanmi lithium project, located near Sandstone in the Murchison of Western Australia. Lithium-bearing pegmatites strike over almost 3km across the tenements up to widths of 200m where mapped. Rock chip sampling at the project has shown lepidolite-rich pegmatites with up to 4.2% lithium oxide and likely tantalum credits.

Canadian listed conglomerate gold specialist Novo Resources has completed an $8m acquisition of a prospective looking gold project in the Egina region, located south of Port Hedland in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The company believes the tenements are prospective for conglomerate, alluvial and shear-hosted gold mineralisation. The transaction comes gift-wrapped with two granted mining licences surrounding the historical Womerina alluvial gold workings.

ASX listed Affinity Energy & Health, formerly known as Algae.tec, has developed a breakthrough algae-based fish feed product for the aquarist market that has a long shelf life and does not require refrigeration. Distribution partner Seachem Laboratories will promote the product to key international aquarist markets through its networks and it has already received a first bulk order.

ASX listed Surefire Resources’ recent reverse circulation drilling at its Unaly Hill project, near Sandstone in the Murchison region of WA, has extended the vanadium mineralisation for several kilometres along strike. All 10 reverse circulation holes in the campaign intersected a number of vanadiferous magnetite bands of varying down-hole widths and assays are currently pending.

Southern Gold has reported some cracking high grade silver assays from underground sampling at its Shin Adit mine, part of the newly granted Deokon project tenements in Korea. Systematic sampling of underground drives produced results up to 0.4 metres grading 9.26g/t gold and 1,165g/t silver. The results effectively produce walk-up drill targets for the company at Deokon to be tested shortly with a diamond drilling program.

Kairos Minerals drilling has extended the strike length of the main Mt York deposit to over 3.8km, raising the likelihood that another resource upgrade might be on the cards for the Pilbara gold project. Some notable high grade intercepts include 3m @ 8.54g/t gold from 56m, 1m @ 15.93g/t gold from 57m and 8m @ 4.77g/t gold.

Image Resources has de-risked the sale of heavy mineral sands from its Boonanarring project just 80km north of Perth with the execution of a second binding offtake agreement with China’s Hainan Wensheng High-Tech Materials. The agreement complements Image’s existing agreement with Natfort as both offtake partners have agreed to take up the other’s share of production in the event that one is unable to do so.

Northern Minerals has re-estimated its mineral resources for the 2018 financial year, reporting just over 9 million tonnes grading 0.63% total rare earth oxides, which includes an ore reserve of 3.3 million tonnes grading 0.68% TREO containing more than 13 tonnes of sought-after dysprosium oxide. The company is currently proving up new discoveries of high grade rare earth element mineralisation at the Dazzler and Iceman prospects.

Volt Resources says the Tanzanian Ministry of Minerals has recommended approving two mining licences over the company’s Bunyu graphite project in the south of the country. The licences strategically cover the footprint for both the proposed Stage 1 and Stage 2 mine developments at the project. The company has been advancing offtake agreements for its product stream and recently completed a positive feasibility for the Stage 1 development.

Adriatic Metals has reported more fantastic drilling intersections from its Rupice multi-mineral ore system in central Bosnia. New drilling results include an impressive 28m intersection going 10.8% zinc, 5.9% lead, 271g/t silver, 3.4g/t gold, 0.5% copper and 61% barite from 236m down-hole. The new hit effectively extends the mineralisation by a further 140m down-dip at the northern end of the deposit, adding more resource tonnes.

Hammer Metals has nailed its latest rock chip program with an exciting suite of super-high grade rock chips at its Perentie project in Mt Isa over a 5km strike. Best results include 31% copper, 19g/t gold and 240g/t silver. The trend runs parallel to the Paddy B-Judith-Copper Ridge trend, where additional mineralised zones discovered by the company’s sampling activity have taken the strike length up to 5.5km.

Azumah Resources has produced an updated mineral resource estimate of 49.2 million tonnes grading 1.6g/t gold for just under 2.5 million ounces at its Wa project in northwest Ghana. This represents a sizeable 21% increase on the previous global resource inventory reported 2 years ago. The measured and indicated resource categories have lifted by 16%, which will help underpin potential ore reserve upgrades for the project later this year.

ASX listed 88 Energy has reached two agreements to increase its Project Icewine acreage in the famed “North Slope” oil province in Alaska by 45,239 net acres. The new western leases are partly covered by several prospects in its current conventional farm-out package whilst the Central Fairway leases are prospective for both conventional and unconventional plays and close to the road and pipeline.

Neometals has appointed two new non-executive directors with wide ranging experience to strengthen its board ahead of the proposed demerger of the Barrambie titanium-vanadium project and associated non-lithium technology assets into a new ASX-listed entity. Dr Jennifer Purdie is the CEO of Adani Australia Renewables while Leslie Guthrie was most recently Vice President Projects (Potash in Canada) for BHP Billiton.

MGC Pharmaceuticals will focus on its cannabis-based pharmaceutical products after reaching a deal to sell its cannabis cosmetics division, MGC Derma, to Canadian private cannabis investment company CannaGlobal for CAD$12.5m in scrip. CannaGlobal will also commit to an exclusive five-year supply agreement for MGC to supply it with raw materials and proprietary production intellectual for the period.

Venus Metals has completed a heli-borne electromagnetic survey at its Greenbushes East base metals project in WA, with preliminary interpretations outlining several conductive features which are coincident with historical zinc and copper surface geochemical anomalies. Interestingly, the project is just 20km from Venture Minerals’ recent massive sulphide discovery at Thor. Venus is now planning follow up field geological reconnaissance once final results of the geophysical survey are known.