Public Company News

Altech Chemicals continues to power through its pre-feasibility study in Germany that is looking to firm up the economics of building a plant that can make use of Altech’s high purity alumina coating technology. The company has now secured space for a research and development facility adjacent to a 14-hectare site in Saxony where it has extended an option over the site as it completes engineering and marketing studies for the plant.

Indiana Resources has signed a native title mining agreement that paves the way for an expansion of its exploration activities across a major mineralised shear structure at its Central Gawler Craton gold project in SA’s venerated Gawler Craton region. The company will now be able to test a bevy of “high-priority” prospects within its massive project landholdings, one of which has already returned bonanza gold drill intersections.

Impact Minerals has secured a shot at what it sees as a “walk-up drill target” at Doonia in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields after being granted tenure over an area covering an impressive 3km-long porphyry target near Lefroy’s promising Burns copper-gold discovery. The company is now planning first-pass exploration at the project and expects to kick off drilling in the second half of 2021.

Surefire Resources has returned another impressive batch of wide, high-grade gold intersections from a follow-up reverse circulation drilling program at its exciting Yidby Road gold discovery in Western Australia. The stand-out drill hit from five holes assayed so far is 44m at 2.77 g/t gold from 149m including 3m at 26.47 g/t from 150m and 5m at 6.27 g/t from 177m.

Things just got interesting for Podium Minerals at its Parks Reef platinum group metals project in WA. Five prior drill holes have been re-assayed for a full suite of PGMs and delivered materially higher grades of rhodium and iridium than previously reported Some assays went as high as 1.35 grams per tonne rhodium and 0.70 g/t iridium. Follow-up drilling is now underway.

Active junior gold and copper explorer Native Mineral Resources will move forward with diamond drilling to test for depth extensions of high-grade surface quartz vein gold at Music Well, north of Leonora, after securing a $68,000 Western Australia government grant. Recent sampling has returned some bonanza grade results including one going over 100 grams per tonne gold.

ASX-listed King River Resources has confirmed previously reported output of high-purity alumina at purity levels greater than 99.99 per cent from its Speewah Dome project in WA’s Kimberley region via recently conducted assay tests. The Perth-based company says the high-purity alumina batches were produced by calcining high-purity precursor materials purified by its refining process from an industrial chemical feed stock material.

Neometals has tabled an impressive pre-feasibility study on the proposed production of high-purity vanadium pentoxide from high-grade vanadium-bearing steel making by-products or slag in Finland. The company says its vanadium recovery project is tipped to generate total free cash flows before tax of $US764 million or almost $A1 billion at an average of about $US72.7 million a year across an estimated plant operating life of 10.5 years.

Development of ASX-listed Calidus Resources’ Warrawoona gold operation in WA has been progressing at “a rapid rate” as it looks to kick off preliminary mining in the middle of this year with an eye on pouring first gold in the first half of next year. The Perth-based company says construction at Warrawoona, which has an estimated CAPEX of $120 million, remains in line with budget and schedule.

Estrella Resources is getting close to joining the dots at its revived Carr Boyd nickel project after it hit 16.35m of disseminated to highly disseminated nickel-copper sulphides 75m below one discovery and 65m above another. The upper discovery previously returned 20.1m at 1 per cent nickel and 0.7 per cent copper and the lower discovery came in at 8.05m @ 0.8 per cent nickel & 0.5 per cent copper – assays are pending.

Aruma Resources continues to kick goals in its endeavours to grow its Australian project portfolio. Two new licences have been awarded at the Melrose project in the Pilbara, growing the prospective stratigraphic trend to 13 kilometres in the gold rich region. Other gold exploration licences at the Scotia South project in WA and the Capital gold project in NSW have also been secured.

Classic Minerals has ticked the last box on the pathway to production at its high-grade Kat Gap project after the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety granted its mining lease application. Kat Gap threw up some spectacular high-grade results last year which prompted the company to purchase a mobile plant to mine the near-surface gold.