Public Company News

ASX-listed automotive panel and repair shop conglomerate, AMA Group, has locked in improved pricing with key insurers, effective from July after concluding service agreement negotiations with all key players. The renegotiated prices are expected to result in meaningful growth across the company’s Australasian network of panel repair workshops that already look set to benefit from a lack of public transport use during COVID-19.

Novo Resources has taken yet another step towards commercial gold production, revealing that it is in advanced discussions with process equipment supplier Steinert Australia to acquire a mechanical ore sorting unit to field test its conglomerate-gold ores in the Pilbara. The unit will be manufactured in Germany and is expected to be deployed into the Pilbara in the latter half of the 2020 field season.

Hot Chili is back in the field at its giant Cortadera copper-gold project in Chile with the Perth company poised to extend an extraordinarily long drill intersection that has already unearthed over 300m of mineralised porphyry. The drill rig fired back up recently following a COVID-19 shutdown and Hot Chili looks to be primed and ready to again test its drilling prowess.

ASX-listed PharmAust Limited has shown that the initial successful testing of its cancer fighting drug, Monepantel, against the COVID-19 virus may not have been a fluke, with new testing showing a “remarkable” 95% suppression rate in the infectivity of the SARS-CoV- 2 virus (COVID-19) in laboratory tests by both Monepantel and Monepantel sulfone. Testing was undertaken at Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne.

Venus Metals Corporation has received a further boost to its war chest with battery metal focussed eMetals Ltd this week forking out $160,000 to complete the purchase of Venus’ Poona Lithium project in WA. The sale allows Venus to shift its focus to a range of new project areas in the fertile terranes surrounding the Youanmi mining region.

Kairos Minerals has more than doubled its Pilbara land tenure in the vicinity of DeGrey Mining’s extraordinary gold find at its Hemi project. Exploration will begin in earnest in the coming weeks with geophysics to be run over the northern tenure and drilling scheduled at the Fuego and Mt Yorke prospects in July. The new acquisition takes Kairos’ tenure from 384 to 774 square kilometres.

Perth’s Infinity Lithium has secured staged funding of up to €0.8 million from the European Union-based EIT InnoEnergy to fund phase one of a pilot plant at its San Jose Lithium project in Spain. EIT InnoEnergy is mandated to support the European Battery Alliance of which Infinity is a member, who is seeking to build a competitive and fully integrated battery supply chain in Europe.

ASX-listed TNT Mines is investigating a US-listing after its East Canyon uranium-vanadium project acquisition located in the US state of Utah, received positive investor interest from North America. TNT is looking at the OTC Markets Group as a site for quoting its shares to facilitate offshore investor demand and consequently enhanced liquidity. TNT said there were currently limited opportunities to invest in US-based uranium projects.

PolarX has received firm commitments from investors to raise around $3.76m, which will be largely used for drilling at its exciting Zackly East gold-copper target at the Alaska Range project in the US where previous results included a whopping 55m hit grading 2.8 grams per tonne gold with 0.6 per cent copper thrown in for good measure.

ASX-listed oiler, 88 Energy, has gone unconditional on its all-scrip takeover bid for Alaskan neighbour, XCD Energy, after picking up 59 per cent of XCD’s shares and nearly 29 per cent of XCD’s listed options. The offer of 2.4 88 Energy shares for each XCD share held and 0.7 88 Energy shares for each XCD listed option is now final, unconditional and will not be increased.

King River Resources is on the home straight now as it looks to complete a pre-feasibility study on its Speewah high purity alumina project in the East Kimberly region of Western Australia. The company said it only has a handful of hydrometallurgical tests to polish off now before the final report can hit the streets. Mining, marketing and environmental studies have already been completed.

Blackstone Minerals has hit a new massive sulphide zone at the Ban Chang West prospect at its Ta Khoa nickel-copper-PGM project in Vietnam with its maiden diamond drilling returning 5m intersection grading 0.66% nickel from 58m down hole. The zone includes just over one metre going an impressive 2.98% nickel, 1.22% copper, 0.18% cobalt and 3.43g/t PGM.