Public Company News

Hammer Metals has announced a deal to divest 100% of its interest in two cobalt prospects near Mt Isa whilst retaining a 1.5% royalty. The deal with Global Energy Metals Corporation allows Hammer to direct its financial resources to its ongoing copper-gold exploration in the region, whilst Global Energy Metals will continue its efforts to build critical mass for a district-scale cobalt play in the region.

Perth-based TNG Ltd has signed strategic agreements with contracting giants Clough and McMahon, bringing the exotic metals company a step closer to catapulting its Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron mine in the Northern Territory into production. The project is expected to spit out a staggering AU$738m a year in free cash and produce an extraordinary pre-tax NPV of AU$4.7b. TNG currently has 804m shares on issue.

ASX listed Azumah Resources has announced some impressive gold intersections from its maiden drilling program at the Butele North target in Ghana. Results include a 6m intersection grading 1.86 g/t gold from the southernmost line. Private equity firm Ibaera Capital has agreed to plough $17.5m into the project for a 47.5% interest even though Azumah’s entire market cap is only $17.5m.

Neometals has announced the acquisition of a strategic brownfields lithium project, located 40km from its existing Mount Marion Lithium project near Coolgardie. The company obtained 75% of the lithium rights to the Mt Edwards Lithium project for a staged consideration of $2.7M and will obtain the remaining 25% lithium rights by purchasing 19 tenements from a private company for a further $1.8M.

Peppermint Innovation shares leapt 22% on news of the company’s planned acquisition of a money remittance business that has facilities in place to transfer money from Australia to over 200 different countries. Peppermint has potentially carved itself off a decent serving of the global money transfer market estimated by the World Bank to grow to US$616 billion next year.

Galena Mining’s breakthrough discovery of a high-grade zone at the Abra lead-silver deposit is yielding exciting clues about the potential for a major extension of the deposit outside the known resource area. New modelling work suggests the high-grade zone could extend up to 1.4km to the Hyperion prospect in the west, where historical drilling hit high-grade lead in the Abra host rocks.

Sixty-four million Latin Americans have come a step closer to satellite based mobile connectivity following an agreement between Sky and Space and Globalstat, regarded as a prelude to a commercial deal that is expected within weeks. Globalstat has operations throughout South and Central America in a market where 10% of people still do not have mobile phones or internet access.

Aspire Mining has begun a 58-hole, 10,000 metre drilling campaign at its Nuurstei coking coal Project in Northern Mongolia in an endeavour to upgrade its resource in readiness for production. The Perth-based explorer, and aspiring coal miner aims to complete a feasibility study this year and has flagged potential first production from Nuurstei from as early as the first quarter of next year.

Terrain Minerals has generated four new base metal drilling targets at its Red Mulga project in the Murchison region of Western Australia. The company reports anomalous base metal results from its recent reconnaissance mapping, rock chip and soil sampling program and now plans to complete a limited drilling program as a follow up. Terrain believes that a large mafic-ultramafic complex may exist at the project.

ASX listed Hammer Metals has announced further high grade copper-gold results from an infill and extensional drilling program at its Jubilee prospect near Mt Isa. Significant results include a 4m intersection grading 6.27% copper and 0.70 g/t gold from the northernmost line of the program, implying that the mineralised system is not closed off along strike or down-dip just yet.

The finish line is in sight for Altech Chemicals, who is considering mezzanine debt amongst a number of options to secure the balance of capex funding for the construction of its high-purity alumina plant in Malaysia. The Perth-based company is eager to avoid heavy dilution of its share register and has expressed confidence that the final piece of the funding jigsaw will slot into place by the middle of the year.

Canadian independent geological consulting firm McDaniel and Associates has given Calima Energy’s coveted Montney Formation acreage in British Columbia a confidence-boosting review with estimates of 2.1Tcf of recoverable gas and 114million barrels of liquids. This verdict has reinforced Perth-based Calima’s conviction that it has a standalone project in the making as it prepares for a drilling campaign.