Public Company News

Hot Chili has extended the prospective, high-grade zone of the Cuerpo 3 porphyry copper-gold ore system within its Cortadera project in central Chile by about 100m to the east after intersecting a 184m zone grading 0.7% copper and 0.3g/t gold from 720m down-hole. This zone is contained within a wider zone of 848m @ 0.4% copper and 0.2g/t gold from 112m.

Horizon Minerals and Northern Star Resources have reached an agreement to swap tenements prospective for gold mineralisation in WA’s Goldfields region. Horizon will secure three projects near Coolgardie to support its current acquisition proposal for Focus Minerals’ adjacent Coolgardie gold project holdings and four projects near Kalgoorlie, including Golden Ridge which has produced over 253,000 ounces of gold.

St George Mining has extended mineralisation at the Stricklands prospect within its flagship Mt Alexander project near Leonora, WA, after intersecting 14 metres of nickel-copper sulphides from a down-hole depth of 78m. The company is also completing a diamond hole to a depth of 450m towards the south and underneath the known shallow mineralisation at Stricklands.

Big River Gold has eliminated its outstanding debt and is now in a strong position to finalise the definitive feasibility study for its flagship Borborema gold project in Brazil later this year. The company is targeting a significant reduction in capital and operating costs with a higher-grade, low strip ratio, starter Stage 1 open-pit envisaged and gold prices now 15% higher than those used in last year’s optimisation study.

The recent success of Strike Energy’s West Erregulla-2 well has buoyed Norwest Energy’s hopes that its upcoming drill program, just north of Strike’s spectacular gas discovery will be able to make waves in its own right. The company is also awaiting 3D seismic data over its Xanadu oil discovery, which will form the basis for contingent resource estimation and set the stage for the Xanadu joint venture to consider an appraisal well.

Legend Mining has commenced a detailed, ground-based EM geophysical survey over the Area D prospect of its Rockford project in the Fraser Range region of southern WA. The survey is being undertaken over the high-priority D5 conductor, where the company has already defined anomalous nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation and is designed to better constrain the target ahead of an upcoming diamond drilling program.

Ironbark Zinc’s proposed, scaled-back 1Mtpa Stage I development of its Citronen base metals project in northern Greenland will benefit from head grades of up to 10.4% zinc/lead during the first year of operation. The company plans to lower the upfront capital costs for the project by targeting the shallow high-grade Beach Zone mineralisation, while still allowing for an expansion to the original feasibility study output of 3.3Mtpa in Stage II.

Vonex has gone from strength to strength since listing on the Australian Stock Exchange in June last year with the company now on track for a 30% increase in new customer sales year-on-year in the current quarter. The company expects sales growth to accelerate throughout the 2020 financial year while increased engagement with its social media indicates that Vonex’s brand awareness is growing rapidly.

Azumah Resources has estimated that its Wa gold project in Ghana could deliver a pre-tax cash flow of USD$448m using an assumed gold price of USD$1,500 per ounce, up 66% from its scoping study estimate that used a price USD$1,300 per ounce. The higher gold price could also lift pre-tax NPV by almost 75% to USD$309m and increase the internal rate of return from 35% to about 54%.

TNG Limited has selected an optimised single-stage, 2 million tonne per annum operation for its Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron mine in the Northern Territory that will trim capital expenditure by $29m to $824m. The project is now estimated to deliver a life-of-mine net cash flow of $12.2 billion, pre-tax net present value of $2.8 billion and pre-tax IRR of 33% while capital payback is estimated at 2.8 years.

Calidus Resources has generated shallow, high-grade gold intercepts outside the existing resources in drilling completed at its emerging Warrawoona project, near Marble Bar, WA. The results are adjacent to the flagship Klondyke deposit and included 12 metres grading 2.68 grams per tonne gold from only 32m down-hole and 4m @ 4.3g/t gold from 44m, in areas that were previously anticipated to be barren of mineralisation.

Strike Energy has increased the net pay zone within the Kingia sandstone conventional gas discovery by 17 metres to 58 metres after completing wireline logging at its West Erregulla-2 well in the Perth Basin, WA. Down-hole tools have indicated the Kingia reservoir as having pressures between 6,814 psia and 6,828 psia with good permeability of 102mD, which supports the potential for a significant recoverable gas resource.