Public Company News

Elon Musk once famously said of his Lithium-ion batteries; “our cells should be called nickel-graphite because primarily the cathode is nickel and the anode side is graphite with silicon oxide”. With the steel industry undergoing a resurgence, Lithium-ion battery demand getting stratospheric and Chinese graphite plants closing due to enviro concerns, it's no wonder the graphite price has jumped 30%.

Calidus Resources are easily pulling their weight amongst the spate of recent gold hopefuls in the Pilbara with new high-grade hits at their Warrawoona gold project of up to 22 g/t Gold. Latest drill results also include 18m @ 4.35 g/t from just 46m down hole and 16 metres at 3.52 g/t. Calidus say they are now dealing with a large mineralized system that remains open along strike and at depth.

Real-time testing of Peppermint Innovation’s mobile-phone bill payment technology is delivering significant customer insights that will assist the ASX-listed fin-tech company to fully commercialise its unique APP. Almost 500 representative agents of Filipino businesses MyWeps, Metro Gas and SUNMar Express have been conducting ‘live’ pilot programs with their customers using Peppermint's APP.

Nzuri Copper have begun diamond drill testing a number of exciting Copper-Cobalt prospects that could extend the life of their fast-tracked Kalongwe development in the Central African Copperbelt. Drilling will include a follow up to last month’s Cobalt discovery at Monwezi 7, which returned a 7-metre intercept with more than 1% Cobalt.

The giant German engineering firm that will build Altech Chemicals High Purity Alumina plant in Malaysia has gone all in with Altech by agreeing to take a A$19.5m stake directly in the company ahead of the building of the plant in Malaysia that will be fed by Kaolin mined from Meckering in W.A. Dusseldorf-based engineering goliath SMS Group have annual sales in the order of 3.3b Euros.

Reedy Lagoon are set to drill a high-impact Lithium brine well in the first quarter of 2018 at their US project after locking in $3.5m via a rights issue that will now be fully underwritten by Patersons. The well will test a potentially Lithium rich groundwater zone in Nevada in the same district as the only Lithium brines producer in the US. Historical geological reports from the 70's indicate there may be Lithium present.

New assays from Neometals’ 100%-owned Barrambie titanium-vanadium deposit suggest it could be an emerging giant of even higher grade than previously believed. The news coincides with work by Neometals on a number of fronts to accelerate a fast-tracked development program based on direct shipping high-grade ore to China. Recent drilling returned stunning intercepts of nearly 32% titanium dioxide.

Geopacific are off and running with the giants in PNG with their Woodlark project that sits dead centre in the middle of some of the largest gold and copper resources in the world. Woodlark Island is surrounded on every side by amazing projects that range from 17m ounces of gold up to Freeport's stunning 63m ounce project. Geopacific picked up the majority of it for a song from Kula Gold who spent $150m on it.

Wireless technology innovator Connected IO could be in for an unexpected bonus thanks to a surge in gold exploration activity around a project retained from its former days as a gold explorer. Connected IO’s Mission and Cables Gold project is next door to the 3Moz Darlot gold mine, now undergoing a renaissance under new ownership. The company has engaged an outside party to evaluate the project.

Auroch Minerals have hit more Cobalt with their third drill at the Tisova project in the Czech Republic, even before reaching the predicted target zone. The hole will be redrilled after hitting an historic void, with the fourth hole in the program to get underway in the meantime. The new Cobalt hits follow a big hit in the previous hole with visible Cobalt and Copper over a 130m interval.

The processing plant for the Browns Range heavy rare earths mine in the East Kimberley has begun to arrive from China, keeping Northern Minerals on track for first production by mid-2018. Northern Minerals has also drawn down the first tranche of their innovative R&D financing facility for the 100%-owned W.A project, which is set to become the world’s first significant producer of Dysprosium outside of China.

Pilbara gold explorer Calidus Resources have cemented control of the Warrawoona gold project, exercising the right to acquire some key tenements. Calidus have also finalised a JV with Canada’s Novo Resources Corp after due diligence found a number of gold anomalies on Novo’s tenements and prospective new trends that had not been previously recognised.