Public Company News

Minerals explorer Si6 Metals will dive into some due diligence after entering into a joint venture and agreeing to acquire a 50 per cent interest in a portfolio of Brazilian lithium and rare earths projects. Management says the deal with Foxfire Metals is subject to a 30-day due diligence period and covers five tenements and five applications across four different project areas in Brazil.

Lindian Resources says it has made significant progress on the optimum design for its processing plant at the company’s Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi, while the mine design and planning are being scoped. The stage-one plant is based on processing an initial throughput of 220,000 tonnes of material per annum to produce a monazite concentrate before expanding to 440,000 tonnes a year.

The Youanmi gold project near Mt Magnet in Western Australia’s Murchison region has coughed up more high-grade results to bolster the confidence of Venus Metals and its joint venture (JV) partner Rox Resources in upgrading the project’s mineral resource estimate. New highlights include 6.38m going 4.45 grams per tonne gold from 381.84m, including 2.56m at 8.26g/t gold from 381.84m.

ASX-listed Aurumin has kicked off the first of two phases of development works for its Mt Dimer gold project, where it is planning shallow open pits at its high-grade Lightning and Golden Slipper deposits. Mt Dimer sits about 120km north-east of Southern Cross, at a site where historical high-grade production delivered more than 125,000 gold ounces, including production of 600,000 tonnes at 6.4g/t gold.

PolarX has pumped up the mineral resource estimate at its Caribou Dome project in Alaska by 160 per cent to 7.2 million tonnes going 3.1 per cent copper and 6.5 grams per tonne silver after a successful drilling campaign. Management says the contained metal at the project now sits at 224,375 tonnes of copper and 1.5 million ounces of silver.

Reverse-circulation (RC) drilling at Everest Metals’ Mt Edon lithium-caesium-tantalum (LCT) project in Western Australia’s Mid-West region has intersected multiple pegmatites from surface to 111 metres deep within a 1.2km corridor. While the RC assays are imminent, surface rock-chip sampling has confirmed high-grade rubidium of up to 3.1 per cent and lithium up to 4.6 per cent.

American West Metals believes it is closing in on a massive underground copper deposit within the tenement boundaries of its Canadian-based Storm copper project. Detected with a ground gravity survey, management says its new evidence adds to already-known exposed copper at surface on-site at Storm and complements recent drill intercepts that found thick copper intersections at depth.

Auric Mining is a step closer to a maiden gold pour from its Jeffreys Find project near Norseman, with the first 30,000 tonnes of gold ore set for processing once transported to Greenfields Mill in Coolgardie. The company says mining at the site has been ongoing for four weeks and it has triple road trains secured to haul the first ore to Coolgardie.

Novo Resources continues to intercept significant gold mineralisation as it seeks to unearth the Pilbara’s next major gold deposit. Having identified multiple new targets at its Becher project, including a big priority area of mineralisation, Novo is extending its immediate drilling program. It says the project’s geological characteristics stack up against the mineralisation at De Grey Mining’s adjacent 10.6-million-ounce Mallina gold project.

ABx Group is edging towards a commercial-grade rare earths project after unveiling a new record intercept of 11m going an impressive 1700 parts per million total rare earths oxide (TREO) from just 2m at its Deep Leads-Rubble Mound project in Tasmania. Management says the intersection also contains 1m going 4444ppm from 7m and 1m grading 3629ppm from 8m.

An impending and material cut to the Northern Territory gas supply is exacerbating the looming East Coast gas crisis. Production at Eni’s Blacktip gas field, offshore in northern Australia, has fallen faster than expected and has raised fears about energy security both within the NT and further afield. But the Beetaloo Basin could emerge as a major source of new supply.

Surefire Resources is positioning closer to having an impact in the world’s burgeoning battery market after stamping a maiden aluminium oxide resource at its Victory Bore project in Western Australia’s Mid West region. The resource – estimated to contain up to 38 million tonnes of aluminium-hosted ore at a grade of 23.3 per cent – will underpin a prefeasibility study for the company’s critical minerals project.