Public Company News

American West Metals has revealed one of the best-ever drill hits at its Storm project in Canada after a hole put in on the south side of the North Graben fault intercepted 22.9m at 8.5 per cent copper. The interval includes semi-massive sulphide zones with individual assays up to 27 per cent copper and importantly, lies outside the Cyclone target’s mineral resource.

A recently-completed magnetic survey by Carnaby Resources has jagged multiple new targets at the Greater Duchess copper-gold joint venture (JV) it shares with Latitude 66 near Mount Isa in Queensland. The versatile time domain electromagnetic (VTEM) survey covering 194 line kilometres revealed multiple strong bedrock conductors at previously-undrilled sites at the JV’s Mount Hope and Nil Desperandum deposits.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears Runner of the Week is … Element 25 after the potential high-purity manganese producer hit paydirt with a US Government energy grant for US$166 million (AU$241.5 million). West Cobar Metals’ share price also leapt higher after it nailed impressive antimony-copper drill hits at its NSW project, while other movers-and-shakers this week were Emperor Energy and Neometals.

Strickland Metals has struck the third-biggest drill result from its Rogozna play in Serbia, reeling in a hefty 50m intercept grading 5.6g/t gold equivalent as part of a total 365.8m hit at 2g/t. The drillhole was aimed at replicating the more than 300m-thick body of gold, copper and zinc mineralisation discovered at an earlier hole and has confirmed a 60m extension to the south-east.

Terrain Minerals has leapt into a new drill campaign at its Wildflower gold project in Western Australia’s Murchison province, with an air-core program of 41 holes for 2100m set to test its two high-priority targets – Wildflower and Cota. The AC drilling will target a significant 1000m-by-500m gold-in-soil geochemical anomaly consisting of a peak value of 246 parts per billion gold.

Novo Resources has unveiled the conceptual exploration target for its Belltopper gold project in Victoria of between 1.4 and 2.1 million tonnes containing between 320,000 and 570,000 ounces of gold. Belltopper lies in the highly-prospective Bendigo Tectonic Zone, about 52km south along strike from Bendigo and 15km south-east of Castlemaine – areas that have produced about 22.4 and 5.6 million ounces of gold, respectively.

Allup Silica has readied itself for drilling as early as next month in a bid to fast-track the development of its 100 per cent-owned McLaren heavy mineral sands project near Balladonia in WA as it pushes forward with a prefeasibility study. The infill drilling is aiming to refine the project’s existing resource estimate and ultimately target a 200 million-tonne deposit.

Aruma Resources has kicked off ground gravity and induced-polarisation geophysical surveys at its Fiery Creek project near Mount Isa in Queensland to test areas of outcropping copper and identify drill targets. The detailed geophysics are part of Aruma’s new mission to acquire data of sufficient quality and resolution to enable prospect-scale drill-targeting, which had not been possible with previous geophysical data over the area.

As market conditions continue to improve, Toro Energy has cranked up the resource estimate at its Lake Maitland deposit near Wiluna in WA to reveal a 12 per cent rise in its uranium resource and a 74 per cent jump in vanadium, after lowering the cut-off grade to 100 parts per million (ppm) to better align with its peers

Red Metal is gearing up for an intense period of exploration across north-west Queensland, with separate drilling programs set to kick off at three of its projects in the coming month. Initial investigative drill campaigns at the company’s Gidyea copper-gold and Lawn Hill silver-lead-zinc projects will be launched to test their significant base metals potential, followed by infill drilling at its Sybella rare earths play.

ChemX Materials has secured a patent from the New Zealand Intellectual Property Office for its “HiPurA” processing technology used to produce high-purity alumina (HPA) for application in cutting-edge technologies such as LEDs, semiconductors and lithium-ion batteries. The patent adds to the company’s recently-granted Australian equivalent and helps reinforce its push to become a key HPA producer in Australasia.

American West Metals has sealed a US$12.5 million (AU$18.8 million) royalty funding deal from TMRF Canada – a subsidiary of Australian-based Taurus Funds Management – to boost the development of its Storm copper project in the Nunavut territory in northern Canada. The company expects to pocket the first US$1 million in the next few days and it will be followed shortly by an additional US$4 million.