Announcements

In the first of Bulls N' Bears’ new guest columnist series, Dollar Bill – sometimes known as Bill McConnell – gets down and dirty with the small cap sector that he says might be about to drag itself off the canvas. Dollar Bill says macro factors such as global GDP, the interest rate cycle and others all suggest an inflection point for ASX juniors.

When all looked lost for a group of parent hopefuls in India, a groundbreaking piece of Australian medical technology developed by Memphasys has turned their dreams of the pitter-patter of tiny feet into reality. Memphasys confirmed today that after its Felix system led to a baby boy being born in India in April, another 10 families have now welcomed little ones into the world.

Reach Resources has identified more than 50 new pegmatites during fieldwork at its Morrissey Hill lithium project in WA’s emerging Gascoyne region, as drilling, rock-chip and soil sampling continues. It says it has mapped individual pegmatites extending up to 2km along strike and up to 30m in width in the sequence that hosts Delta Lithium's neighbouring Malinda deposit, which boasts mineralisation from surface to 350m.

Stream geochemical sampling by Gold Mountain at its Cerro Cora-Porta D’Agua project in Brazil has confirmed that lithium anomalies correlate with niobium-tantalum ratios and may help the company identify lithium-rich pegmatites. Management says it found that a fine sample fraction provided better anomaly definition and it used the method’s results in all subsequent analyses and interpretations.

White Cliff Minerals will intensify its focus on its rare earths and lithium portfolio after selling Abraxis Mining ¬– including three Pilbara lithium tenements – to Gold Geological Consulting for $200,000. The company says the transaction is part of an ongoing portfolio review that is expected to lead to further divestments of non-core projects as it builds on its significant Western Australian rare earths and lithium holdings.

Strickland Metals has kicked off two 3D induced-polarisation surveys at its priority Rabbit Well and Iroquois base metals prospects in Western Australia’s Earaheedy Basin – an emerging metallogenic terrane believed to have tier-one base metal potential. The company says both prospects exhibit coincident geophysical and surface geochemical anomalies and are geologically well-situated for the mineralisation styles it is chasing.

American West Metals looks set to acquire an 80 per cent share of the Storm project in Canada’s Nunavut province from Aston Bay Holdings after completing its exploration spend requirement at the operation. As part of an option agreement in 2021, American West was granted the chance to grab the commanding slice of the project once exploration expenditure of C$10 million (AU$11.475 million) was completed.

Australian med-tech Chimeric Therapeutics has secured the support of a United States cancer centre for a trial of its “natural killer” cell therapy for newly-diagnosed patients with acute myeloid leukemia. The clinical “Advent_AML” study, designed to enrol up to 20 patients at the University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Center, will include a novel first-time combination with standard-of-care therapy.

Novo Resources has officially kicked off a maiden drill campaign at its Nunyerry North project that forms the southern part of its Egina gold camp in Western Australia’s Pilbara region – hot on the heels of its ASX listing on Monday. Management has planned a 2000m reverse-circulation program at the operation where it is targeting structurally-controlled gold targets and extensive gold-in-soil anomalies.

DiscovEx Resources says it is cashed up to bolster exploration activities at its Sylvania and Edjudina projects in Western Australia after banking more than $250,000 from recent tenement and shares sales. The company says a geophysical survey will follow up on previous soil-sampling gold and lead hits at Sylvania in multiple areas of both disseminated and semi-massive sulphides along the Prairie Downs Faults Zone.

ABx Group has installed a pilot-scale bath reactor and an associated support system at its Alcore Technology Centre in NSW to trial the production of hydrogen fluoride from aluminium smelter waste. The chemicals research and manufacturing company has developed a world-first process to produce hydrogen fluoride from a fluoride-rich waste product known as “bath”, which is often produced in excess from aluminium smelting.

Aurum Resources is set to launch a maiden 74-hole air-core drilling campaign at its Ryans Find gold project, north-east of Koolyanobbing, after completing trackwork for the rig and a heritage clearance survey. Some 3500m of drilling will be oriented in multiple transects perpendicular to the prospective greenstone belt to follow-up on gold and base metals anomalies observed in soil sampling.

Aruma Resources is chasing more gold with a multi-hole diamond drilling program at its Salmon Gums project in Western Australia following previous campaigns where the company discovered bonanza grades of up to 224 grams per tonne of gold. The project is in the same stratigraphy and 30km south of Pantoro’s Scotia project, which has a mineral resource of 1 million ounces of gold.

BMG Resources has instigated scoping and development studies, in addition to resource definition, expansion and exploration drilling, to develop and expand the 518,000-ounce resource at its Capital deposit in Western Australia. The company also plans to test other gold anomalies south of Capital, which it believes have the potential to deliver more pre-PFS ounces to the project.

Octava Minerals will become the sole owner of the prospective 202-square-kilometre Talga lithium project in the Pilbara after signing a deal to buy the remaining 30 per cent interest from its partner First Au. Octava will purchase First Au’s entire project holdings – including a 20 per cent free-carried interest – for $200,000, 1.2 million fully-paid ordinary shares and a net smelter royalty of 0.75 per cent.

St George Mining has jumped into a new critical minerals exploration program for lithium, rare earths and copper at its district-scale Woolgangie project within the fertile Coolgardie Mineral Field in Western Australia. The site sits adjacent to operating lithium mines and where historical drilling previously identified rare earths and copper anomalism. It will be the company’s first drilling program at Woolgangie.

Flush with cash from an oversubscribed IPO and a $35 million deal with neighbouring mining giant De Grey Mining for its Becher project, Novo Resources Corporation has officially launched on the ASX. The successful IPO netted the company, which is also listed in Canada, $7.5 million before costs through the issue of 37.5 million common shares to Australian residents only.

Auric Mining has started milling the second ore parcel from its 100 per cent-owned Jeffreys Find mine near Norseman and expects the first cash to land in the till next month – at a serendipitous time of strong gold prices. The company says the 145,000 tonnes of ore will take about seven weeks to process, with 52,000 tonnes already delivered to the Greenfields Mill in Coolgardie.

ABx Group has locked in a deal that could be worth up to about $9 million for the supply of cement-grade bauxite to South Australian construction materials company Adelaide Brighton Cement’s Birkenhead manufacturing operation. The contract will see ABx supply between 90,000 and 120,000 tonnes of bauxite during a five-year term from its DL130 project in northern Tasmania.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has got straight down to work in a new drilling campaign at its Pinjin gold project in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields, plunging two holes on the first day in a bid to mirror glittering historic results. The new program is aimed at extending thick, shear-hosted gold mineralisation at Kirgella Gift and confirming historic assays at Providence, between 300m and 500m further south.

ANSTO confirmation that mineral concentrates from Lindian Resources’ Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi are non-radioactive has delivered simpler logistics and transport options and enhanced offtake opportunities. The company has also produced concentrate grades of up to 66 per cent total rare earth oxides (TREO) from ore at the Malawi operation, by beneficiation using gravity and magnetic separation techniques.

Infinity Lithium subsidiary Infinity Greentech has confirmed improvements in recoveries and the successful production of battery-grade lithium hydroxide through the application of its “Li-Stream RPK” process. The company says the use of mica from its San Jose project in Spain as part of the process has the potential to herald a new European production era for lithium mica applications.

Toro Energy’s 100 per cent-owned Dusty nickel project in Western Australia’s Goldfields continues to grow, with the company’s latest assays showing an up-dip extension to the continuous lens of nickel-rich mineralisation, about 160m thick. Assays from Dimma’s fifth diamond hole showed 2.1m of massive nickel-sulphide grading 1.83 per cent nickel, 0.29 per cent copper and 0.55 grams per tonne platinum and palladium from 147.1m.

A Brightstar Resources scoping study has revealed the company will punch out an EBITDA of $153 million over an eight-year mine life at its dual Menzies and Laverton gold projects in Western Australia. The study outlines an initial target of 5.28 million tonnes at 2g/t gold for 322,617 ounces and an extraordinary pre-tax internal rate of return of 79 per cent.

ASX-listed Si6 Metals has launched a new drill program at its flagship Dibete copper-silver project in Botswana, with a 15-hole campaign set to explore untested anomalies within the site’s known oxidised zones. The company says Dibete is the first of three projects to be tested in the next four months, with its Airstrip and Malbele North sites set to be next on its exploration calendar.

ABx Group’s ALCORE pilot plant in NSW is now fully funded to completion after the company raised an extra $1.5 million to complement a $7.5 million grant received from the Australian Government through its Modern Manufacturing Initiative. Construction at the NSW Central Coast site has started and the company has taken delivery of the bath mini-reactor, with formal commissioning of the plant just days away.

ChemX Materials has advanced its high-purity alumina (HPA) micro-plant flowsheet as it prepares to scale up to pilot-plant production. The company has now also identified intermediate HPA product pathways and says investment in high-precision analytical equipment and dedicated human resources has resulted in increased operational performance for its HPA micro-plant. A maiden high-purity manganese mineral resource estimate is also imminent.

Javelin Minerals looks set to put significant new impetus behind its lithium exploration and production goals in Uganda after signing a strategic takeover bid implementation agreement with Gecko Minerals. The company says Gecko directors have “unanimously” recommended shareholders back the move, which will net it two new projects in the African nation that are considered prospective for lithium.

Empire Energy Group has lit up with increased gas flow rates from its fracture-stimulated Velkerri shale gas horizontal well, known as “Carpentaria-3H”, in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin. The company says it has reaffirmed its optimised extended production test strategy. The results replicate post-soaking improvements seen in its other horizontal well, Carpentaria-2H, auguring well for the planned gas pilot project to service existing gas pipelines.

A deep dive into an historical dataset coupled with boots on ground has lit up a 10km lithium trend at GreenTech Metals’ West Pilbara projects that sit tantalisingly close to Azure Minerals’ Andover lithium discovery. Field mapping and analysis of historical soil sampling has etched out two distinct lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) pegmatite trends where recent rock-chip sampling returned assays peaking at 3.6 per cent lithium oxide.

Maiden drilling on two prospects at St George’s Ajana project in Western Australia has turned up trumps, with significant widespread and shallow zinc-lead-silver mineralisation seen in an untested play concept for the area. The company is now planning more drilling through a vast crop of highly-prospective targets with a similar fingerprint of gravity and/or magnetic anomalies.

88 Energy will flow test four reservoir zones in its Hickory-1 oil well in Alaska’s north during the coming winter operational season. Hickory-1 – part of the company’s project Phoenix, which was previously known as Icewine East – is cased and suspended awaiting the arrival of Rig-111, which is expected to start re-entry of the well from next month.