Public Company News

Allup Silica has undertaken further analysis on its 2023 air-core drill samples and identified promising rare earths, uranium and graphite mineralisation at its Pink Bark project near Esperance in WA’s Albany Fraser region. The campaign originally identified a significant kaolin clay deposit that the company believes may contain a resource of between 700,000 and 1.2 million tonnes.

In this edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some notable drill intercepts revealed on the ASX, including from Ora Gold’s Crown Prince which hit 20m at 277.36g/t gold, including 4m at 1368g/t gold. We also take a close look at other interesting drill hits from last week as reported by Axel Rare Earths’ hit from Brazil and Piche Resources big uranium hit in WA’s Ashburton region.

Terrain Minerals has delivered an exploration target for its Larin’s Lane prospect of between 25 and 33m tonnes at a total rare earths oxide grade between 880 and 980ppm TREO and from 19 to 21ppm gallium. The company says it expects to launch drilling next year to update that exploration target estimate once results from the program are to hand.

Strickland Metals has launched phase two metallurgical testing to test metal recoveries before locking down processing flowsheets from its Shanac deposit, part of the company’s Rogozna gold and base metals project in Serbia, after bulk samples arrived at ALS Laboratory in Perth. The 400kg sample, made up of core from Shanac is now under the supervision of Macromet, a specialist mineral processing consultant.

Aurum Resources’ bid for Mako Gold could create a new West African golden-force with $20 million in cash, its own fleet of drill-rigs and a string of well mineralised projects within cooee of each other. And this isn’t the first rodeo for Aurum managing director Caigen Wang who has done it all before in Côte D’Ivoire having built the 3.8m ounce Abujar gold mine on the same structural trend.

With “hematite” iron ore discoveries slowing to a trickle, billionaires and others are turning to the once-maligned poor cousin of the iron ore industry “magnetite” that comes with almost biblical scale.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears Runner of the Week is … Green Critical Minerals. The critical mineral explorer picked up some new groundbreaking graphite technology that can produce high-thermal conductivity material. Li-S Energy ran hard after revealing improvements to its lithium-sulfur battery tech, while other movers and shakers this week were Asian Battery Metals and Red Mountain Mining.

Titanium Sands has won approval from Sri Lanka’s Geological Survey and Mines Bureau to consolidate the five main licences at its Mannar mineral sands project to assist the process of obtaining an industrial mining licence. The consolidation is a requirement of the country’s “Board of Investment” in order to seek foreign investment approval for the project.

St George Mining has received the backing of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais via a Memorandum of Understanding to assist with fast-tracking its Araxà niobium-REE project in Brazil. The MoU covers assistance with regulatory approvals and will see both parties collaborate on other areas that will support the domestic supply chains for niobium, rare earths and related downstream products.

Octava Minerals is preparing to kick off a gravity and seismic program ahead of a drilling campaign at its Yallalong project 220km northeast of Geraldton in Western Australia in the hunt for antimony. Following earlier mapping and rock-chip sampling, the company will conduct detailed geophysical surveys aimed at identifying shear zones and rock boundaries, key indicators for unearthing mineralised fluid pathways.

88 Energy has wrapped up a successful 2D seismic program across its petroleum exploration licence in Namibia’s Owambo Basin with initial analysis picking up significant subsurface structures. The company will soon begin crunching the processed data in collaboration with joint venture partner Monitor Exploration and look to produce an independent prospective resource estimate by April next year.

It feels like Groundhog Day after Strickland Metals served up yet another massive drill hit from its Serbian copper-gold Medenovac prospect within the company’s Rogozna project. The latest drill campaign has thrown up a significant 223m intersection grading 1.7g/t gold equivalent from 179m including 43m at 4.6 g/t gold equivalent from 357m. The mineralisation now strikes for 150m.