Public Company News

Carnaby Resources has identified its undrilled San Quentin prospect as a new copper target, with rock-chip grades going up to 6.7 per cent at the Greater Duchess project it shares with Latitude 66 in Queensland. Sitting 2km to the south-east of the JV’s Nil Desperandum copper discovery near Mount Isa, management says San Quentin is showing 800m of outcropping mineralisation.

Quantum Graphite has extended its land grab at the Uley project in South Australia, increasing the ground area to 117 square kilometres at the site near the State’s historic fishing town of Port Lincoln. The company is on the hunt for deposits of flake graphite to supply the critical mineral into its Sunlands Power joint venture for conversion into thermal energy storage cells.

South Perth-based mining giant IGO has passed the $350,000 exploration expenditure threshold required for it to grab a 51 per cent slice of Buxton Resources’ promising Copper Wolf project in Arizona. And IGO can now continue on to grab another 19 per cent interest in the joint venture project it shares with Buxton by spending a further $5 million.

On a massive turnover of more than 105 million shares, White Cliff Minerals' stock surged more than eight per cent today after the company revealed multiple copper rock-chip samples grading more than 50 per cent from its Rae project in Canada’s Nunavut territory. The maiden field program confirmed large-scale, high-grade copper occurrences at both the company’s Rocket and Thor prospects.

Xanadu Mines has unveiled a prefeasibility study of biblical proportions at its Kharmagtai copper-gold project in Mongolia’s South Gobi Desert, including a pre-tax US$1.4 billion NPV, an IRR of 31 per cent at spot commodity prices and a mine life of nearly three decades. The study confirms the project’s potential as a globally-significant, low-cost, long-life mining operation.

In this edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some of the more notable drill intercepts revealed on the ASX, including African Gold’s 33m at 2.4g/t gold at its Didievi project in Cote d’Ivoire. We also take a close look at other interesting drill hits from last week as reported by Nexus Minerals and Great Southern Mining, both from WA’s Goldfields region.

Lycaon Resources has secured its final heritage and program of works approvals to clear the way for drilling at its multi-element Stansmore carbonatite project in Western Australia’s West Arunta region. The heritage clearance survey, which was completed in July, relates to the company’s three priority Stansmore, Volt and Ions targets where it is chasing niobium, rare earths and iron oxide copper-gold.

The European Central Bank, followed by the US Federal Reserve and then the Bank of China, have all confirmed that a new era of falling interest rates has arrived. Historically, small cap equity markets have consistently outperformed during times of monetary easing and these latest central bank moves suggest the period of small cap underperformance may be coming to an end.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears Runner of the Week is … lithium. The silvery-white metal is back in the headlines for all the right reasons, pumping the share prices of several companies, including Arcadium Lithium, which is at the centre of a takeover bid by Rio Tinto. Kali Metals also spiked on the lithium trend, while Rimfire Pacific Mining and Rhythm Biosciences also ran hard.

Global metals-trading giant Glencore has cast its eye across Estrella Resources’ manganese ground in Timor-Leste, where the latter has unveiled high-grade rock-chip assays hitting up to 57 per cent manganese at its Sica and Lalena prospects in the nation’s Lautém Municipality. The results, which highlight the high-grade nature of manganese mineralisation in the largely untapped region, have marked a major step forward for Estrella’s exploration.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining is spreading its exploration wings at its Pinjin project in WA to test new targets next to existing prospects in the southern part of the area’s prospective Laverton Tectonic Zone. The company has lined up air-core drilling at two targets named Kirgella East and Kirgella West, which are respectively centred 1200m north-east and north-west from its combined Kirgella Gift and Providence prospects.

With burgeoning expectations for a new lithium wave to soon appear on the horizon, Chariot Corporation – the biggest lithium landowner in the US – has made a strategy shift at its Black Mountain project in Wyoming to get ready for the ride. The plan is to take advantage of Wyoming’s unique mining regulations in order to scale a future mine in line with the lithium market.