Public Company News

King River Copper has laid claim to the highest-grade vanadium concentrate of any Australian mineral deposit after successfully completing metallurgical tests on the company’s massive Speewah project in the Kimberley. Perth-based King River said the bar had been raised by grinding and separating test work that produced a magnetite-ilmenite concentrate of 2.11% vanadium pentoxide, elevating Speewah to vanadium royalty status.

Myanmar Metals has announced some spectacular high grade base metal, silver and cobalt assays from its first drilling program at the world class Bawdwin deposit in Myanmar. Results include 46 metres grading 9.7% lead and 116g/t silver from the base of the historic open pit and 19 metres @ 6.6% lead, 187g/t silver, 0.5% copper and 0.11% cobalt from a depth of just 3 metres.

Southern Gold’s hopes for a rapid restart of a number of high-grade gold mines in South Korea have been boosted, with new investigations at the mine revealing it to be in excellent condition. Joint venture partner Bluebird Merchant Ventures reported the mine has been frozen in time since the 1970s, when a US$140 gold price brought about a premature close.

Maiden drilling by Magmatic Resources at the MacGregors gold prospect in central NSW has identified a 2km-long belt of gold mineralisation and doubled the best gold grades achieved by previous explorers. The latest results have established MacGregors, part of the Parkes JV with Japan’s JOGMEC, as the company’s third highly prospective gold project less than a year after listing on the ASX.

Classic Minerals has announced it has executed an MOU with Tianye SXO Gold Mining, who own the Marvel Loch processing plant, 100km north of the company’s promising Forrestania Gold project. Classic has several potential sources of gold ore identified through its focus on the Lady Ada and Kat Gap deposits. The deal could provide a valuable stream of cash to support Classic’s regional exploration play.

Blackham Resources has added at least another six months to its high-grade underground mine and believes it may still be harbouring more high grade ounces that have not yet been discovered. Mining at the Golden Age underground mine has been extended to December 2018 and drilling began this week into highly prospective targets that could see the mine plan roll on much longer.

ASX-listed Sky and Space Global has booked first revenues from its history making nano-satellites that are currently orbiting the earth. The company says that revenues from its three pilot miniature satellites are expected to ramp up to around A$1 million a year from current bandwidth and up to $1 billion a year once its entire network of 200 nano-satellites is up and running.

Hammer Metals has announced a deal to divest 100% of its interest in two cobalt prospects near Mt Isa whilst retaining a 1.5% royalty. The deal with Global Energy Metals Corporation allows Hammer to direct its financial resources to its ongoing copper-gold exploration in the region, whilst Global Energy Metals will continue its efforts to build critical mass for a district-scale cobalt play in the region.

Perth-based TNG Ltd has signed strategic agreements with contracting giants Clough and McMahon, bringing the exotic metals company a step closer to catapulting its Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron mine in the Northern Territory into production. The project is expected to spit out a staggering AU$738m a year in free cash and produce an extraordinary pre-tax NPV of AU$4.7b. TNG currently has 804m shares on issue.

ASX listed Azumah Resources has announced some impressive gold intersections from its maiden drilling program at the Butele North target in Ghana. Results include a 6m intersection grading 1.86 g/t gold from the southernmost line. Private equity firm Ibaera Capital has agreed to plough $17.5m into the project for a 47.5% interest even though Azumah’s entire market cap is only $17.5m.

Neometals has announced the acquisition of a strategic brownfields lithium project, located 40km from its existing Mount Marion Lithium project near Coolgardie. The company obtained 75% of the lithium rights to the Mt Edwards Lithium project for a staged consideration of $2.7M and will obtain the remaining 25% lithium rights by purchasing 19 tenements from a private company for a further $1.8M.

Peppermint Innovation shares leapt 22% on news of the company’s planned acquisition of a money remittance business that has facilities in place to transfer money from Australia to over 200 different countries. Peppermint has potentially carved itself off a decent serving of the global money transfer market estimated by the World Bank to grow to US$616 billion next year.