Public Company News

Galan Lithium says it has set the evaporation process in motion at its Hombre Muerto West lithium brine project in Argentina, with the earthworks and lining of its first pond officially complete. The company is targeting first-phase lithium chloride production at the operation in the first half of next year and continues to tick off key infrastructure milestones.

American West Metals is set to launch a new drill attack and smash into an exploration and resource expansion program at its Storm copper play on Somerset Island, within the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After recently boosting its cash holdings by $10 million, it expects the drill program to begin next month, with about 22,000m of reverse-circulation and diamond drilling planned.

White Cliff Minerals has contracted Expert Geophysics to complete an airborne geophysical survey over its entire Coppermine project in the Canadian province of Nunavut as soon as next quarter. The company says the campaign will use mobile magnetotellurics to image subsurface resistivity and it is expected to highlight and define structural trends to optimise future drill targets.

This week’s profiled ASX runner of the week is… APM Human Services. Its share price rose more than 73 per cent to join Way2Vat, 29 Metals and Australian Mines.

Gold Mountain says it has put its foot on a big chunk of ground it believes to be prospective for rare earths and niobium in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais, with 20 new tenements covering 388sq km. The tenure comprises four groups disposed across a tract of country surrounding and within an 80km radius of the world’s biggest niobium mine in the Araxá region.

Classic Minerals appears set for a significant financial boost as it pushes towards production at its Kat Gap gold project after executing a binding term sheet with an international fintech for an initial US$10 million. The agreement with Swiss-based AuResources also provides for the advance of a further US$50 million in five tranches of US$10 million each.

Aurum Resources has bolstered its African diamond drilling fleet with a new, more powerful rig to help the company unlock a maiden gold resource estimate for its Boundiali gold project in Côte d’Ivoire this year. The three-rig drilling fleet will deliver an impressive 30,000m of core as the company takes aim at deep gold mineralisation beneath and adjacent to artisanal mines at the project.

Some old-fashioned detective work has set Terrain Minerals on a pathway to try and emulate Sirius Resources’ 2012 discovery of the hulking Nova-Bollinger deposit in WA’s Fraser Range. Terrain says its search through old geophysical records identified an intriguing “eye-shaped” feature near its ground similar to the one that led to the Nova-Bollinger base metals discovery – just 300km to the north on the same geological structure.

Si6 Metals says it has mapped and sampled clay-rich saprolite outcrops prospective for ionic-adsorption clay rare earths up to 12m thick at its Caldera JV project it shares with Foxfire Metals in Brazil. Assays are now pending after the JV sent 16 soil, channel and auger samples to the SGS Geosol laboratory in the Brazilian State of Minas Gerais.

88 Energy has completed the first stage of its farm-in to a massive 18,500 square kilometres of ground in Namibia’s Owambo Basin – one of the globe’s last remaining onshore frontier petroleum basins. It now has a 20 per cent interest in the ground and can up its share to 37.5 per cent in phase two and 45 per cent in phase three of the farm-in.

American West Metals is cashed up and ready to tear into an exploration and resource expansion program at its Storm copper play in Canada after pumping up its bank account with $10 million in fundraising. The company says the raise was oversubscribed, with several of its directors intending to stump up their cash and participate in the placement.

Askari Metals has capped off its hunt for new exploration ground by staking a claim for the 260-square-kilometre Matemanga uranium project in Tanzania as the heavy metal's price surges on clean energy demand. The company’s decision to pounce on the ground comes after its extensive geotechnical reviews that identified the area as a hot uranium target with significant potential.