Public Company News

Altech Batteries has clocked up a key milestone with the successful launch of its first 60kWh “Cerenergy” sodium-chloride battery prototype in Germany. The company says the battery unit, which has been installed at the Fraunhofer IKTS lab in Dresden, has passed all physical tests with “flying colours” and has smashed through forecast performance and efficiency expectations in the rigorous daily assessments.

In this week’s edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine notable drill intercepts revealed on the ASX, including Global Uranium’s hits up to 5387ppm uranium oxide in Colorado. We also take a look at other interesting drill hits as reported by Superior Resources from its Steam Engine gold project in Queensland and Great Boulder Resources from its Mulga Bill gold prospect in WA.

Triangle Energy has secured the crucial environmental plan approval to drill its Becos-1 well in WA’s Perth Basin and expects to launch the campaign before year’s end in its quest for onshore oil and gas. Rig tenders are now underway to test the shallow target where a best estimate of 5 MMbbl has been identified, with the potential to reach as much as 21 MMbbl.

Estrella Resources has revealed high-grade manganese in Timor-Leste just days after nailing down new exploration licenses at its Samalari prospect in the nation’s Baucau Municipality. The site is showing manganese oxide mineralisation along a 1.7km strike zone with widths of up to 5m and early samples have returned impressive hits going up to 53.9 per cent manganese, according to analysis from Australian Laboratory Services.

Aguia Resources has reinterpreted its high-grade, polymetallic gold-copper-silver-zinc El Dovio play in Colombia as an orogenic lode gold-silver style of mineralisation that was followed later by copper and zinc. The company’s new designation contrasts sharply with its previous casting as a volcanogenic-hosted massive sulphide (VMS/VHMS) deposit and indicates that the base metal component results from emplacement during later tectonic processes.

Lithium Universe has defied market trends to post an upbeat prefeasibility study for its Bécancour lithium carbonate refinery in the Canadian city of Québec, delivering a pre-tax NPV of US$779 million (AU$1.17 billion) and an annual EBITDA of US$147 million (AU$221 million) in its bid to service the growing North American market and fill the conversion gap by reducing the need for Chinese product.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has kicked off a high-resolution aeromagnetic geophysical survey in the northern half of its Pinjin project, 140km north-east of Western Australia’s important mining centre of Kalgoorlie. The survey will provide modern quality data with significantly better resolution than is currently available for the northern part of the project that covers the prospective Jungle Dam area and southward extensions of the Edjudina Goldfield.

Estrella Resources has locked up four extra exploration and evaluation concessions to kick off Timor-Leste’s newly-instituted 2021 mining code direct grant process. The leases, which are particularly prospective for manganese, sit in the Southeast Asian country’s western Baucau Municipality and add to its four exploration licences, 30km to the north-east, that it picked up last year.

American West Metals has revealed one of the best-ever drill hits at its Storm project in Canada after a hole put in on the south side of the North Graben fault intercepted 22.9m at 8.5 per cent copper. The interval includes semi-massive sulphide zones with individual assays up to 27 per cent copper and importantly, lies outside the Cyclone target’s mineral resource.

A recently-completed magnetic survey by Carnaby Resources has jagged multiple new targets at the Greater Duchess copper-gold joint venture (JV) it shares with Latitude 66 near Mount Isa in Queensland. The versatile time domain electromagnetic (VTEM) survey covering 194 line kilometres revealed multiple strong bedrock conductors at previously-undrilled sites at the JV’s Mount Hope and Nil Desperandum deposits.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears Runner of the Week is … Element 25 after the potential high-purity manganese producer hit paydirt with a US Government energy grant for US$166 million (AU$241.5 million). West Cobar Metals’ share price also leapt higher after it nailed impressive antimony-copper drill hits at its NSW project, while other movers-and-shakers this week were Emperor Energy and Neometals.

Strickland Metals has struck the third-biggest drill result from its Rogozna play in Serbia, reeling in a hefty 50m intercept grading 5.6g/t gold equivalent as part of a total 365.8m hit at 2g/t. The drillhole was aimed at replicating the more than 300m-thick body of gold, copper and zinc mineralisation discovered at an earlier hole and has confirmed a 60m extension to the south-east.