Public Company News

American West Metals believes it is closing in on a massive underground copper deposit within the tenement boundaries of its Canadian-based Storm copper project. Detected with a ground gravity survey, management says its new evidence adds to already-known exposed copper at surface on-site at Storm and complements recent drill intercepts that found thick copper intersections at depth.

Auric Mining is a step closer to a maiden gold pour from its Jeffreys Find project near Norseman, with the first 30,000 tonnes of gold ore set for processing once transported to Greenfields Mill in Coolgardie. The company says mining at the site has been ongoing for four weeks and it has triple road trains secured to haul the first ore to Coolgardie.

Novo Resources continues to intercept significant gold mineralisation as it seeks to unearth the Pilbara’s next major gold deposit. Having identified multiple new targets at its Becher project, including a big priority area of mineralisation, Novo is extending its immediate drilling program. It says the project’s geological characteristics stack up against the mineralisation at De Grey Mining’s adjacent 10.6-million-ounce Mallina gold project.

ABx Group is edging towards a commercial-grade rare earths project after unveiling a new record intercept of 11m going an impressive 1700 parts per million total rare earths oxide (TREO) from just 2m at its Deep Leads-Rubble Mound project in Tasmania. Management says the intersection also contains 1m going 4444ppm from 7m and 1m grading 3629ppm from 8m.

An impending and material cut to the Northern Territory gas supply is exacerbating the looming East Coast gas crisis. Production at Eni’s Blacktip gas field, offshore in northern Australia, has fallen faster than expected and has raised fears about energy security both within the NT and further afield. But the Beetaloo Basin could emerge as a major source of new supply.

Surefire Resources is positioning closer to having an impact in the world’s burgeoning battery market after stamping a maiden aluminium oxide resource at its Victory Bore project in Western Australia’s Mid West region. The resource – estimated to contain up to 38 million tonnes of aluminium-hosted ore at a grade of 23.3 per cent – will underpin a prefeasibility study for the company’s critical minerals project.

KalGold has forged a successful maiden drill run at the company’s Kirgella Gift prospect – part of its bigger Pinjin project, 140km north-east of Kalgoorlie – intersecting thick zones of gold mineralisation. With no shortage of other gold miners nearby in the prolific Laverton tectonic zone, KalGold’s Pinjin is poised to turn heads in the market as an emerging exploration play.

Xanadu Mines expects to deliver an updated JORC resource for its Kharmagtai copper-gold project in Mongolia before the end of the year, following the discovery of new high-grade zones during infill drilling. The company has completed about half of its massive 30,000m diamond drill campaign as it targets resource extensions at its Stockwork Hill and White Hill deposits.

Classic Minerals’ Kat Gap gold mine is set for first production this month after the successful installation of its 2MW power plant at the site in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. The company can now rev up its “Gekko” processing plant and is perfectly poised to become WA’s next gold producer, with more than 700,000 ounces of gold sitting in its resource estimates.

Infinity Mining has expanded its foothold in WA’s East Pilbara by nearly 100 square kilometres after acquiring three new tenements to bring its total holding in the region to more than 780sq km. The sites were bought from TasEx Geological Services and include ground considered prospective for volcanic-hosted massive sulphides and shear-hosted gold deposits right next door to Infinity’s Tambourah South lithium project.

A change in strategy appears to be close to paying dividends for Alma Metals after it read the global energy tea leaves and shifted from African coal to instead zero in on a big Queensland copper find. The $13.25 million market-capped company is bearing down on a shallow porphyry deposit at its Briggs copper project, 50km west of Gladstone in Central Queensland.

Surefire Resources is eyeing a November delivery of the prefeasibility study for its Victory Bore vanadium play, clearing the way for the next step in commercialising the project’s massive deposit in Western Australia’s Mid West region. Surefire is also making preliminary plans for further drilling to enable its measured resources to be converted into a JORC-compliant reserve.