Public Company News

Northern Minerals has passed another significant milestone after producing more than 210,000 kilograms of heavy rare earth carbonate concentrate for sale to end-users. A 40,406kg shipment of concentrate from Northern’s Browns Range rare earths pilot plant is due to be dispatched to its European offtake partner within days. The shipment will contain dysprosium, terbium and yttrium.

Adriatic Metals continues to deliver the goods at the Raska project in Serbia with more wide shallow zinc hits including 36m at 3.7 per cent zinc, 1.4 per cent lead, 21 g/t silver and 0.2 g/t gold from surface. A third rig is due on site next month as the company targets a maiden JORC resource this year.

ASX-listed WA agribusiness avocado orchard developer, Alterra Ltd says it expects to bank nearly $700,000 courtesy of the Federal Government’s research and development tax incentive scheme. According to the company, the government scheme, administered by the ATO, recognises the innovative avocado growing methodology it has implemented across the initial five-hectare planting out of its flagship Carpenters avocado project development in WA’s South West.

Things are starting to get interesting for White Cliff Minerals in the Goldfields of WA with results from two gold drilling campaigns at the Reedy South project soon to be tabled as the company looks to grow its current resource base. New targets for follow-up testing in the second quarter and throughout the year are also being generated.

ASX-listed explorer, Comet Resources has struck an agreement to buy a portfolio of prospective greenfields base and precious metals properties in the Northern Territory in a scrip-dominated staged payment deal worth under $1 million. The tenements package consists of several exploration licences and licence applications spanning an area of approximately 840 square kilometres that take in the Oonagalabi copper-zinc, Paradise Well copper-gold and Silver Valley copper-gold-silver-lead projects.

ASX-listed Venture Minerals has started building a key piece of production infrastructure at its rejuvenated Riley iron ore project in north-west Tasmania, with structural, mechanical, piping and electrical installation of the wet screening plant now well under way. Construction of the plant will be followed by its commissioning, which the company expects to take place late next month.

Si6 Metals appears to have locked onto extensions of its Maibele nickel deposit in Botswana, with drilling 200 metres along strike from the known resource intersecting massive sulphide stringers that returned anomalous assays of both nickel and copper mineralisation. Diamond drilling is testing a new, recently identified hanging-wall sulphide lode, which lies around 200 metres to the south-east of the existing Maibele North deposit.

Kairos Minerals is getting into full swing with the commencement of a drilling blitz across two projects in WA. A 3,000-metre campaign at Roe Hills targeting nickel and gold is due to start early next month, whilst another 20,000m campaign is looking to grow existing gold resources at Mt York in the Pilbara. Both are due to start mid-April.

Troy Resources has teased out further high-grade gold hits from the latest diamond drill holes at its Smarts Underground gold deposit which sits snuggly between its active Smarts open pits at the Karouni gold project in Guyana, South America. The last batch of assays delivered some good widths including 20m at 3.68 g/t gold from 212m and 13m at 3.64 g/t gold from 177m downhole.

ASX-listed Chilean focused copper hopeful, Hot Chili has unearthed yet another spectacularly long copper mineralised drill hit at its giant Cortadera copper-gold porphyry discovery in Chile. Latest results from the company’s 40,000m follow-up drilling campaign at Cortadera were headlined by an eye-catching 813m intercept grading an average 0.4 per cent copper and 0.1 g/t gold from just 54m depth.

Coda Minerals has the bit between its teeth at its Emmie Bluff copper project, having completed a 17-hole diamond drilling program across the South Australian target. The drill program completes a significant milestone in the company’s advance towards declaring a maiden JORC resource in the coming months. It is now logging and sampling almost 8,000m of drill core while awaiting the results from the assay labs.

Sihayo Gold has unearthed an intriguing near-surface bonanza gold drill hit at its Hutabargot Julu epithermal gold-silver prospect in North Sumatra, Indonesia. The high-grade intersection was 9m at 8.36 g/t gold and 9.3 g/t silver from just 8m depth including 1.2m going a spectacular 48.4 g/t gold and 23.7 g/t silver, providing some cause for on-market excitement as the company’s share price more than doubled in intraday trade.