Public Company News

The Madagascan Government has offered to fast-track development of BlackEarth Minerals’ flagship Maniry graphite project, after a positive meeting with the country’s Minister of Mine and Strategic Resources. A German specialist industrial mineral testing outfit has also begun a program for evaluating the company’s ore concentrates for battery testing, while a Chinese institute has independently confirmed the premium quality of the project’s ores.

Vonex’s core cloud-based PABX telephony business continues to go from strength to strength with the ASX-listed telco now counting a milestone 30,000 registered active users on its books, a 25% increase in the last 12 months. The company also recorded new customer sales value of more than $1.3 million in the June 2019 quarter, which represents a 44% increase from the previous quarter.

Lithium Australia has continued to intersect wide pegmatite intervals with lithium mineralisation from its first pass reverse circulation drilling program at the Youanmi project near Sandstone in WA’s Murchison region. Lepidolite mineralisation has been intersected in most holes drilled to date in the program, which will be used to assess the resource potential and geometry of the pegmatites.

Calidus Resources’ PFS for its flagship Warrawoona gold project located near Marble Bar, WA, will churn out $61m per annum in free, pre-tax cashflows over an initial mine life of six years. Based on an AUD$1,800 per ounce gold price and production of about 100,000 ounces per year through a conventional 2Mtpa plant, the project has an estimated pre-tax NPV of $151m and an IRR of 40%, with payback in two years.

Rox Resources has hit the ground running at its Mt Fisher gold project near Wiluna, WA, with encouraging new assay results returned from drilling at the Dam, Dirks and Damsel South prospects. The company believes that the potential for uncovering large gold zones at the project is high despite deep weathering that obscures the basement rocks and geological structures, which has resulted in sparse drilling below the oxidised profile.

Image Resources has received the green light to drill a 1.3 km section of the highly prospective 5.6km northern extension area, or “NEA”, within its high-grade, zircon-rich Boonanarring mineral sands project, 80km north of Perth, WA. Drilling and assessment of mineralisation in the NEA is aimed at verifying the presence of economic mineralisation to increase the project’s mine life.

Indonesia focussed gold developer, Nusantara Resources, has increased its confidence in the potential for a grade uplift to be realised once its Awak Mas gold project on the island of Sulawesi, Indonesia, is in production. Trenches dug across an exploration bench have demonstrated additional high-grade structures that were not captured by ore reserve drilling and related block models.

Spectrum Metals’ Phase II drilling campaign at the Penny West project near Youanmi, WA, has returned additional, deep high-grade gold intersections at the Penny North discovery, extending the mineralisation down-plunge. New drill intercepts included 5m @ 24.4g/t gold from 241m down-hole, 6m @ 14.8g/t gold from 268m down-hole and another hole that recorded 11m @ 3.9g/t from 221m down-hole and 3m @ 15.4g/t gold from 239m down-hole.

Intermin Resources’ ongoing regional drilling activities in the Goldfields region of WA, have delivered encouraging assays following up on historical drill results and testing of new prospect areas. At the Teal East prospect, an intersection of 12m @ 4.19g/t gold from 76m down-hole has extended the existing mineralisation and provided a good foundation for growing the current Teal mineral resource of nearly 290,000 ounces.

Anglo Australian Resources has confirmed that supergene gold mineralisation at the Think Big prospect within its flagship Feysville project near Kalgoorlie is largely continuous over 200m of strike and up to 80m wide. Infill drilling recorded a top result of 10 metres grading 10 grams per tonne gold from 23 metres down-hole, including a peak 1m intersection grading 76.1g/t gold.

Australian Potash has received recognition for the test work activities that will feed into the ongoing definitive feasibility study at its Lake Wells sulphate of potash, or “SOP”, project near Laverton, WA, with the receipt of a $1.3 million research and development tax rebate. Proceeds from the tax refund will be used to complete the work streams feeding into the study, which is scheduled to be completed before the end of this year.

Image Resources has confirmed the presence of a high-grade core of zircon-rich mineral sands, with a close-spaced drilling program over the eastern strand line of its Boonanarring project, located north of Perth in WA. The company said assay results from the infill program at Block C were encouraging and corroborate mining and processing results at the mine, which show higher ore grades than had initially been forecast.