Public Company News

Unlisted private equity backed Barton Gold has received an all-important nod of approval from a South Australian Government authority tasked with approving or rejecting non-military use of its minerals rich military land in South Australia. Barton said this week it had secured Resource Exploration and Production Permits from the Woomera Prohibited Area Coordination Office known as “WPACO”.

Coziron Resources now has a diamond rig operating at its Top Camp prospect in the Pilbara, undertaking a second phase of drilling designed to follow up some exciting previous drill numbers such as 8 metres grading 10.2 grams per tonne gold from 135m down hole. The company said it will drill around three holes to about 200m depth across the 1.5km long, 400m wide prospect.

Despite the current Coronavirus inspired market challenges, ASX-listed Hot Chili has encountered no difficulty in completing a $5m placement to sophisticated and institutional investors to progress its burgeoning Cortadera copper-gold discovery in Chile. Existing shareholders will also get a piece of the action with an additional $3.9m expected to come in from a non-renounceable rights issue.

TSX-listed Novo Resources has uncovered a third, broad, shallow, alluvial gold-bearing channel at its Paradise project in the Pilbara after returning to the field recently. Novo also said assays of alluvial gravels from its nearby Egina mining lease returned a solid 0.84 grams gold per cubic metre from bulk samples that are proving better than traditional drilling in sizing up its conglomerate gold opportunity.

Ora Banda Mining has landed on a final resource estimate of 30,000 ounces of contained gold in the open pit section of its Callion gold deposit in WA’s Goldfields, up 114 per cent on previous estimates and now with a higher grade of 3.5g/t. The company is now working on a design to take the existing open hit from 40m down to a depth of 85m.

ASX-listed Legend Mining continues to fatten up its emerging, massive nickel-copper sulphide discovery at Mawson in Western Australia’s Fraser Range. Assay results tabled last week from diamond drilling returned two intercepts in one hole showing a total of 36.6m of mineralisation with grades increasing significantly at depth. Assay results just in from another hole bring the total mineralisation in that hole to 107.9m.

Buru Energy has received $1.2m in cash for its share of the latest sale of crude oil from its Ungani oil field in Western Australia’s Canning basin. This is the third oil sale for the year and rounds out a solid first half for Buru that was already sitting on a cash pot of $30 million at the end of the March quarter.

Blackstone Minerals’ King Cobra nickel discovery at its Ta Khoa nickel-PGM project in Vietnam looks to have plenty of bite left in it yet after the Perth based ASX-listed company nailed a near 38m intersection going 1.12 per cent nickel right from the surface. Whilst the platinum group element results are still to come, the nickel results are looking lucrative.

After raising nearly $1M recently, Classic Minerals has hit the gas on a decent-sized RC drilling program at its Forrestania gold project near Southern Cross having spent the last few months evaluating previous results that saw it book a sizeable resource increase. Classic said the rig will visit the Van Uden West, Matrix and Tangerine Trees prospects, all of which the company says are begging for additional attention.

King River Resources is undertaking further hydrometallurgical test work on the high purity alumina, or “HPA”, that can be produced from its giant Speewah specialty metals project in the East Kimberly. Independent assay results and repeat analysis on the company’s recent breakthrough production of a high value 99.99% “4N HPA” product will be tabled soon.

Perth-based agricultural investment and management company, Alterra, has entered into two contracts to sell 913 hectares of its 1,640Ha “Dambadgee Springs” property near Dandaragan in Western Australia to a local farmer. The total value of the two contracts is $3.1M and the ASX-listed company said it plans to retain $2.0M as working capital with the balance utilised to retire debt.

ASX-listed engineering group, Primero Group has increased its shareholding in unlisted, Gawler Craton-focused Barton Gold with a view to collaborating on enhanced processing opportunities at Barton’s South Australian gold projects when they spring back to life. Primero, Barton’s preferred services provider for the turnkey design, construction and operation of mine processing infrastructure, will focus on the re-start of the Tarcoola mine.