Announcements

ASX listed Blackstone Minerals has announced it will recommence drilling at its high grade Little Gem cobalt-gold project in British Columbia shortly, using a specialist local contractor. The company also released anomalous gold assay results from a multi-element stream sediment geochemical sampling program at the project, extending the limits of the target zone out to 1.8km.

Ironbark Zinc’s Citronen project is rapidly moving from the drawing board to ground-breaking reality as the Perth-based company prepares to ship equipment to Greenland during the northern hemisphere summer. Landed cargoes, scheduled for mid-August, will trigger the start of the mine construction phase aimed at fulfilling the production potential of one the largest undeveloped zinc projects in the world.

An investment bank and research house has set a price target for Hot Chili at a 500% premium to recent trades, based on the value of the aspiring copper producer’s Productora project in Chile. EverBlu Capital also sees several scenarios where Hot Chili could be valued many times higher because of a strengthening copper market and smart moves to transform the economics of its flagship Chilean copper project.

King River Copper has laid claim to the highest-grade vanadium concentrate of any Australian mineral deposit after successfully completing metallurgical tests on the company’s massive Speewah project in the Kimberley. Perth-based King River said the bar had been raised by grinding and separating test work that produced a magnetite-ilmenite concentrate of 2.11% vanadium pentoxide, elevating Speewah to vanadium royalty status.

Myanmar Metals has announced some spectacular high grade base metal, silver and cobalt assays from its first drilling program at the world class Bawdwin deposit in Myanmar. Results include 46 metres grading 9.7% lead and 116g/t silver from the base of the historic open pit and 19 metres @ 6.6% lead, 187g/t silver, 0.5% copper and 0.11% cobalt from a depth of just 3 metres.

Southern Gold’s hopes for a rapid restart of a number of high-grade gold mines in South Korea have been boosted, with new investigations at the mine revealing it to be in excellent condition. Joint venture partner Bluebird Merchant Ventures reported the mine has been frozen in time since the 1970s, when a US$140 gold price brought about a premature close.

Maiden drilling by Magmatic Resources at the MacGregors gold prospect in central NSW has identified a 2km-long belt of gold mineralisation and doubled the best gold grades achieved by previous explorers. The latest results have established MacGregors, part of the Parkes JV with Japan’s JOGMEC, as the company’s third highly prospective gold project less than a year after listing on the ASX.

Classic Minerals has announced it has executed an MOU with Tianye SXO Gold Mining, who own the Marvel Loch processing plant, 100km north of the company’s promising Forrestania Gold project. Classic has several potential sources of gold ore identified through its focus on the Lady Ada and Kat Gap deposits. The deal could provide a valuable stream of cash to support Classic’s regional exploration play.

Blackham Resources has added at least another six months to its high-grade underground mine and believes it may still be harbouring more high grade ounces that have not yet been discovered. Mining at the Golden Age underground mine has been extended to December 2018 and drilling began this week into highly prospective targets that could see the mine plan roll on much longer.

ASX-listed Sky and Space Global has booked first revenues from its history making nano-satellites that are currently orbiting the earth. The company says that revenues from its three pilot miniature satellites are expected to ramp up to around A$1 million a year from current bandwidth and up to $1 billion a year once its entire network of 200 nano-satellites is up and running.

Hammer Metals has announced a deal to divest 100% of its interest in two cobalt prospects near Mt Isa whilst retaining a 1.5% royalty. The deal with Global Energy Metals Corporation allows Hammer to direct its financial resources to its ongoing copper-gold exploration in the region, whilst Global Energy Metals will continue its efforts to build critical mass for a district-scale cobalt play in the region.

Perth-based TNG Ltd has signed strategic agreements with contracting giants Clough and McMahon, bringing the exotic metals company a step closer to catapulting its Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron mine in the Northern Territory into production. The project is expected to spit out a staggering AU$738m a year in free cash and produce an extraordinary pre-tax NPV of AU$4.7b. TNG currently has 804m shares on issue.

ASX listed Azumah Resources has announced some impressive gold intersections from its maiden drilling program at the Butele North target in Ghana. Results include a 6m intersection grading 1.86 g/t gold from the southernmost line. Private equity firm Ibaera Capital has agreed to plough $17.5m into the project for a 47.5% interest even though Azumah’s entire market cap is only $17.5m.

Neometals has announced the acquisition of a strategic brownfields lithium project, located 40km from its existing Mount Marion Lithium project near Coolgardie. The company obtained 75% of the lithium rights to the Mt Edwards Lithium project for a staged consideration of $2.7M and will obtain the remaining 25% lithium rights by purchasing 19 tenements from a private company for a further $1.8M.

Peppermint Innovation shares leapt 22% on news of the company’s planned acquisition of a money remittance business that has facilities in place to transfer money from Australia to over 200 different countries. Peppermint has potentially carved itself off a decent serving of the global money transfer market estimated by the World Bank to grow to US$616 billion next year.

Galena Mining’s breakthrough discovery of a high-grade zone at the Abra lead-silver deposit is yielding exciting clues about the potential for a major extension of the deposit outside the known resource area. New modelling work suggests the high-grade zone could extend up to 1.4km to the Hyperion prospect in the west, where historical drilling hit high-grade lead in the Abra host rocks.

Sixty-four million Latin Americans have come a step closer to satellite based mobile connectivity following an agreement between Sky and Space and Globalstat, regarded as a prelude to a commercial deal that is expected within weeks. Globalstat has operations throughout South and Central America in a market where 10% of people still do not have mobile phones or internet access.

Aspire Mining has begun a 58-hole, 10,000 metre drilling campaign at its Nuurstei coking coal Project in Northern Mongolia in an endeavour to upgrade its resource in readiness for production. The Perth-based explorer, and aspiring coal miner aims to complete a feasibility study this year and has flagged potential first production from Nuurstei from as early as the first quarter of next year.

Terrain Minerals has generated four new base metal drilling targets at its Red Mulga project in the Murchison region of Western Australia. The company reports anomalous base metal results from its recent reconnaissance mapping, rock chip and soil sampling program and now plans to complete a limited drilling program as a follow up. Terrain believes that a large mafic-ultramafic complex may exist at the project.

ASX listed Hammer Metals has announced further high grade copper-gold results from an infill and extensional drilling program at its Jubilee prospect near Mt Isa. Significant results include a 4m intersection grading 6.27% copper and 0.70 g/t gold from the northernmost line of the program, implying that the mineralised system is not closed off along strike or down-dip just yet.

The finish line is in sight for Altech Chemicals, who is considering mezzanine debt amongst a number of options to secure the balance of capex funding for the construction of its high-purity alumina plant in Malaysia. The Perth-based company is eager to avoid heavy dilution of its share register and has expressed confidence that the final piece of the funding jigsaw will slot into place by the middle of the year.

Canadian independent geological consulting firm McDaniel and Associates has given Calima Energy’s coveted Montney Formation acreage in British Columbia a confidence-boosting review with estimates of 2.1Tcf of recoverable gas and 114million barrels of liquids. This verdict has reinforced Perth-based Calima’s conviction that it has a standalone project in the making as it prepares for a drilling campaign.

ASX-listed Hot Chili has created a sense of early excitement around its new Valentina prospect at the El Fuego copper project in Chile. The company has stumbled across historic records that show up to 4.8% copper was pulled from the shallow, small scale, family owned mine at Valentina back in the 1990s. Other historical results include an 11m intersection going 2% copper.

Northern Minerals has timed its Browns Range heavy rare earths project in the East Kimberley to perfection, with construction nearing completion just as US President Donald Trump calls on Australia to help it secure new supplies of strategic rare earths. Northern confirmed this week the project is on track for completion by June 30 and work is well advanced on exploring moves into downstream processing.

Galena Mining’s bold plan to unlock the potential of the giant Abra deposit is coming together in spectacular fashion, with a new resource estimate confirming it as one of the largest undeveloped lead-silver deposits in the world. The deposit now boasts 11.2 Mt at a very impressive 10.1% lead and 28 g/t silver, ranking it as the highest grade lead deposit in Australia and one that has global significance.

MGC Pharma’s new cannabis based diet and vegan vitamin supplement comes in seven different flavours to be sold in both capsule and powder form. The ASX-listed medical marijuana company is tapping into a growing global health supplement market estimated at over US$550 billion. The company said the product meets strict European Union guidelines and will be used to instil “inner health and wellbeing”.

Neometals has announced high-grade drilling intercepts at its Virginia Hills prospect, located adjacent to its flagship Barrambie project. The discovery shows 8 km of strike continuity for the vanadium-titanium mineralisation. Neometals is well advanced with technical studies for the project, including detailed drilling to define a 50,000-tonne ore parcel for metallurgical test work.

Geopacific Resources looks set to join the coveted ranks of the 100,000 ounce a year club with its Woodlark Gold Project in Papua New Guinea for at least the next ten years. The company’s share price rose 20% ahead of the highly anticipated pre-feasibility study, which is now on the street and hasn’t disappointed with a projected all in sustaining cost to produce each ounce of gold below the magical AU$1000 an ounce mark.

The wait is almost over and the anticipation is palpable. John Poynton chaired Strike Energy’s historic Jaws-1 appraisal well is steaming seamlessly towards completion in the Southern Cooper Basin as the company attempts to prove that coal seam gas can be accessed economically at previously unheard of depths. An interconnecting horizontal well will now be subjected to a seven-stage hydraulic stimulation program.

Connected IO has strengthened its relationship with a major US telco, securing a reseller agreement for its internet of things products in North America. The deal will see Connected IO’s wireless modem like products sold into the US by the unnamed telco giant that has a sales force of over 3,000 people in North America. Connected IO’s technology enables a user to remotely monitor and control devices via the internet.

Calidus Resources has identified a swag of exciting gold targets at its Warrawoona Project after completing an exhaustive regional target generation study at the rapidly expanding Pilbara project. The Company has identified 45 high priority exploration targets that will be fully evaluated and ranked in the coming months. Calidus will complete reconnaissance exploration ahead of drilling programs scheduled to commence during Q2 2018.

In basketball terms it's called a slam dunk. Blackham Resources has confirmed a stunning turnaround at the Matilda gold project with gold production climbing to a record of 6,713 ounces in February, while all in sustaining costs were slashed to just A$912 an ounce. Milled grades and gold production are expected to continue to improve with stockpiled ore grades going 1.7 g/t gold.