Public Company News

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.

Terrain Minerals has leapt into a new drill campaign at its Wildflower gold project in Western Australia’s Murchison province, with an air-core program of 41 holes for 2100m set to test its two high-priority targets – Wildflower and Cota. The AC drilling will target a significant 1000m-by-500m gold-in-soil geochemical anomaly consisting of a peak value of 246 parts per billion gold.

Novo Resources has unveiled the conceptual exploration target for its Belltopper gold project in Victoria of between 1.4 and 2.1 million tonnes containing between 320,000 and 570,000 ounces of gold. Belltopper lies in the highly-prospective Bendigo Tectonic Zone, about 52km south along strike from Bendigo and 15km south-east of Castlemaine – areas that have produced about 22.4 and 5.6 million ounces of gold, respectively.

Allup Silica has readied itself for drilling as early as next month in a bid to fast-track the development of its 100 per cent-owned McLaren heavy mineral sands project near Balladonia in WA as it pushes forward with a prefeasibility study. The infill drilling is aiming to refine the project’s existing resource estimate and ultimately target a 200 million-tonne deposit.

Aruma Resources has kicked off ground gravity and induced-polarisation geophysical surveys at its Fiery Creek project near Mount Isa in Queensland to test areas of outcropping copper and identify drill targets. The detailed geophysics are part of Aruma’s new mission to acquire data of sufficient quality and resolution to enable prospect-scale drill-targeting, which had not been possible with previous geophysical data over the area.

As market conditions continue to improve, Toro Energy has cranked up the resource estimate at its Lake Maitland deposit near Wiluna in WA to reveal a 12 per cent rise in its uranium resource and a 74 per cent jump in vanadium, after lowering the cut-off grade to 100 parts per million (ppm) to better align with its peers

Red Metal is gearing up for an intense period of exploration across north-west Queensland, with separate drilling programs set to kick off at three of its projects in the coming month. Initial investigative drill campaigns at the company’s Gidyea copper-gold and Lawn Hill silver-lead-zinc projects will be launched to test their significant base metals potential, followed by infill drilling at its Sybella rare earths play.

ChemX Materials has secured a patent from the New Zealand Intellectual Property Office for its “HiPurA” processing technology used to produce high-purity alumina (HPA) for application in cutting-edge technologies such as LEDs, semiconductors and lithium-ion batteries. The patent adds to the company’s recently-granted Australian equivalent and helps reinforce its push to become a key HPA producer in Australasia.

American West Metals has sealed a US$12.5 million (AU$18.8 million) royalty funding deal from TMRF Canada – a subsidiary of Australian-based Taurus Funds Management – to boost the development of its Storm copper project in the Nunavut territory in northern Canada. The company expects to pocket the first US$1 million in the next few days and it will be followed shortly by an additional US$4 million.

Neometals has dusted off historical data to unveil a new Western Australian gold strategy at its Barrambie project that previously produced 27,000 ounces at 27.8g/t. The company says recent rock-chip samples threw up grades as high as 44g/t, prompting it to pivot back to the precious yellow metal, while its titanium and vanadium pursuits will now take a backseat.

In this week’s edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some notable drill intercepts revealed on the ASX, including Mithril Silver and Gold’s 33m at 31.8g/t gold and 274g/t silver at its Mexican project. We also look at other interesting drill hits as reported by Flynn Gold from its Trafalgar zone and from Patronus Resources’ Cardinia project near Leonora in Western Australia.