Announcements

Si6 Metals says it has mapped and sampled clay-rich saprolite outcrops prospective for ionic-adsorption clay rare earths up to 12m thick at its Caldera JV project it shares with Foxfire Metals in Brazil. Assays are now pending after the JV sent 16 soil, channel and auger samples to the SGS Geosol laboratory in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais.

88 Energy has completed the first stage of its farm-in to a massive 18,500 square kilometres of ground in Namibia’s Owambo Basin – one of the globe’s last remaining onshore frontier petroleum basins. It now has a 20 per cent interest in the ground and can up its share to 37.5 per cent in phase two and 45 per cent in phase three of the farm-in.

American West Metals is cashed up and ready to tear into an exploration and resource expansion program at its Storm copper play in Canada after pumping up its bank account with $10 million in fundraising. The company says the raise was oversubscribed, with several of its directors intending to stump up their cash and participate in the placement.

Askari Metals has capped off its hunt for new exploration ground by staking a claim for the 260-square-kilometre Matemanga uranium project in Tanzania as the heavy metal's price surges on clean energy demand. The company’s decision to pounce on the ground comes after its extensive geotechnical reviews that identified the area as a hot uranium target with significant potential.

White Cliff Minerals says it is now the single-biggest holder of mineral exploration claims in Canada’s Northwest Territories after it was granted new licence approvals for the province’s Radium Point project. The company is focussed on iron oxide-copper-gold-uranium deposits and silver mineralisation in the area that hosts the historical Eldorado, Echo Bay and Contact Lake mines.

Valor Resources has ticked off a second item from its targeted triad of lithium targets in Canada’s booming Thunder Bay area in Ontario after completing its acquisition of the Jesaulenko project. Valor’s 100 per cent acquisition of Jesaulenko comes just days after it also grabbed the nearby Frazer Lake lithium project and an 80 per cent share of the Hook Lake uranium play in Saskatchewan.

Lithium Universe has secured a prime location for its proposed battery-grade lithium carbonate refinery in Canada after executing an option agreement to purchase a commercial property in the province of Quebec. The location for the facility is between Quebec City and Montreal at the Bécancour Industrial Waterfront Hub, with heavyweight engineering firm Hatch to undertake a comprehensive study for the refinery’s design.

ABx Group is confident its subsidiary Alcore will achieve substantially-enhanced fluorine recovery after incorporating new equipment to deliver the ideal feed particle size for its reactor to handle. The company is awaiting results from a fourth phase of testwork after a ball mill and an ultrasonic vibrating screen were used to prepare a narrower range of particle sizes for feed material.

King River Resources is set to kick off a new drill campaign at its Tennant Creek East project in the Northern Territory as part of a $2 million commitment to hunt for high-grade copper-gold this year. Drilling will target the promising Commitment, Langrenus and Providence prospects, all in proximity to several head-turning copper-gold drill intersections recorded in recent years in the highly-regarded Tennant Creek region.

88 Energy is poised to launch into the critical flow-testing phase for the Hickory-1 well at its Phoenix project in Alaska after commissioning its rig and finishing off the construction of its ice pad. With joint venture partner Burgundy Xploration contributing its share of the costs, testing is expected to start within the next 10 days once the rig mobilisation is completed.

In an exclusive interview with Bulls N’ Bears, international stock-trading entrepreneur Jim Mellon has boldly predicted a vibrant third lithium wave for global markets. Mellon says, “now is a great time to be loading up on lithium”, despite the price for the silvery-white metal going into something of a hibernation in the back part of last year.

Octava Minerals has the drill bit primed for a maiden nickel-copper-cobalt exploration program at its Yallalong project in Western Australia’s Mid West region, as part of a strategic collaboration with the CSIRO – the nation’s premier science agency. The campaign will test several significant anomalies identified through the CSIRO’s Kick-Start program, an initiative designed to assist innovative Australian start-ups and small-to-medium enterprises.

Strickland Metals’ aggressive gold hunt in Western Australia is steaming ahead at full pace, with its recent air-core drilling program highlighting consistent hits in a newly-defined 750m zone at its Yandal project near Wiluna. The company says bottom-of-hole intercepts indicate a new structure west of its highly-promising Dusk til Dawn prospect that contains an inferred resource of 109,000 gold ounces.

Lindian Resources has revealed high-grade rare earths running up to 7.15 per cent TREO at its enormous Kangankunde project in the African country of Malawi following a geological mapping and sampling campaign. The company says its most recent work shows that outcropping carbonatite prospects both north and south of the project are highly mineralised with rare earths.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears profiled ASX runner is … Prodigy Gold. Its share price rose 125 per cent to join fellow movers and shakers American Rare Earths, Dateline Resources and Way2Vat.

Valor Resources has secured an 80 per cent share of the highly-prospective Hook Lake uranium project in Canada, just two days after acquiring the 83sq-km Frazer Lake lithium play across the country in Ontario. Hook Lake is in the Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan – a region that has become widely known as being the world’s leading producer of high-grade uranium.

Gold Mountain has kicked off a new thrust into rare earths exploration at its Down Under project after amassing a giant land position of some 970 square kilometres in the prospective Jequie province in Brazil. The company has pegged its ground largely based on areas of anomalous thorium and uranium geochemistry, which is known to be associated with rare earths mineralisation in the province.

Alma Metals has extended the higher-grade copper-molybdenum mineralisation strike at the Central Zone within its Briggs project in Queensland to about 500m, with new drill hits including 161m at 0.29 per cent copper and 71ppm moly from 22m. The intercept is part of a longer 242.4m zone beginning just 5.4m from surface and running 0.26 per cent copper and 60ppm moly.

Ora Banda Mining is on track to achieve steady-state production at its Riverina underground gold mine near Kalgoorlie in the June quarter, with capital projects complete and first stopes to be mined next month. First ore from the underground operation was processed as a single batch through the company’s nearby Davyhurst processing plant and returned 16,727 tonnes at 2.74g/t to produce 1383 gold ounces.

St George Mining has defined a series of 1km-long lithium soil anomalies in areas yet to be drill-tested at its flagship Mt Alexander project in WA’s Goldfields region after a successful sampling program. The company is gearing up to drill the new targets as early as next month, with its biggest prospect covering a strike of more than 2.7km.

Lithium Universe has initiated key metallurgical testwork on different spodumene types from all around the globe, with a view to creating a robust stream of feedstock for its proposed lithium refinery project in Quebec. The battery-grade lithium carbonate refinery has been designed to mirror the Jiangsu Lithium Carbonate Plant and will be able to process spodumene from any part of the world.

Valor Resources has secured the rights to acquire the 83-square-kilometre Frazer Lake lithium project in Canada’s Ontario province where pegmatite sampling has yielded 44m at 0.54 per cent lithium oxide. The company today revealed it had signed a definitive purchase option agreement to pick up Frazer Lake, which lies in the Thunder Bay region that has several significant lithium projects under development.

Octava Minerals and Future Metals are set to gallop onto their Palomino prospect in a bid to define the mineralised footprint at their East Kimberley JV sitting along strike from WA’s historic Copernicus mine. The JV plans to kick off the new field season with structural and geological mapping and soil sampling in the highly-prospective nickel sulphide and PGM setting of the Halls Creek Orogen.

Novo Resources’ earn-in partner De Grey Mining has recorded significant gold hits from an ongoing air-core and reverse-circulation drill campaign at their shared Becher gold project in WA’s Pilbara region. De Grey has completed 10,500m of a 39,000m drill program at the operation, with initial assays returning positive results including an 8m intercept at 4.74g/t gold from 96m at the Lowe target.

GreenTech Metals has produced grades of up to 2.36 per cent lithium oxide from drilling and sampling of its pegmatites in Western Australia’s West Pilbara region – along strike from Azure Minerals’ giant Andover lithium discovery. Andover has an exploration target estimate in the range of 100 to 240 million tonnes at grades between 1 and 1.5 per cent lithium oxide.

Buxton Resources has identified at least two new and untested porphyry copper-molybdenum drill targets at its Sun Devil and Aztecs prospects that form part of its Copper Wolf project in the US State of Arizona. The two “exciting” targets were defined by a combination of new field mapping and historical data including a helicopter-supported exploration program.

Horizon Minerals has moved to build further on its mission to become a mid-tier gold producer in Western Australia’s renowned Goldfields region through a proposed merger with Greenstone Resources. The merger would create a combined entity with a significant landholding containing 1.8 million ounces of gold near a toll treatment mill in the historic WA town of Coolgardie.

Infinity Lithium has continued its chase for the rights to mine lithium and establish a conversion facility at its San José project in Spain by formally lodging an application with the local government. The project, with a mineral resource of 111.3 million tonnes grading 0.61 per cent lithium oxide and 206 parts-per-million tin, is in Extremadura – a remote mountainous region that borders Portugal.

Si6 Metals and Foxfire Metals are poised to launch their joint venture search for rare earths and lithium at their Caldera project in Brazil that sits near Meteoric Resources’ colossus Caldeira play boasting 409 million tonnes at 2626ppm TREO. Geophysical studies are underway and surface sampling will begin this week, while lithium exploration will begin in this year’s second quarter in the “Lithium Valley”.

Si6 Metals and Foxfire Metals are poised to launch their joint venture search for rare earths and lithium at their Caldera project in Brazil that sits near Meteoric Resources’ colossus Caldeira play boasting 409 million tonnes at 2626ppm TREO. Geophysical studies are underway and surface sampling will begin this week, while lithium exploration will begin in this year’s second quarter in the “Lithium Valley”.

Meeka Metals’ mapping and sampling has highlighted what it believes is an important gold-arsenic anomaly within a 2km-long shear zone at its Murchison gold project, about 28km north-east of Meekatharra in Western Australia. Management says its surface geochemistry picked up the anomalism, which mapping shows as correlating with en echelon splays where previous drilling intersected grades of up to 54g/t gold.

Si6 Metals has confirmed it is now the co-owner of 10 prime Brazilian exploration licenses covering a massive 17,000 hectares prospective for lithium, rare earths, gold, base metals and platinum group elements. And its new joint venture with Foxfire Metals plans to start exploring ground this month in the Caldera rare earths project area, which sits within the State of Minas Gerais.