Public Company News

Aruma Resources is putting its shoulder to the wheel to expand the gold and rare earths footprint at its Salmon Gums project in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields region after completing a 63-hole air-core drilling program. The campaign included 39 holes targeting rare earths, with the other 24 drillholes following up previous drilling to assess gold-bearing lodes at the company’s Thistle gold discovery.

Testwork on ore from Infinity Lithium’s San José project in Spain has confirmed recoveries of more than 90 per cent, a result that will support a definitive feasibility study and pilot plant design. The company says the results exceed recoveries assumed in the project’s scoping study and confirm consistent production of battery-grade lithium hydroxide monohydrate from the 111-million-tonne orebody.

Joint venture (JV) partners Horizon Minerals and Dundas Minerals have hit high-grade gold from an initial drilling program at their Windanya gold project after the two companies recently completed an option agreement.

Altech Batteries is getting closer to producing its Cerenergy solid-state battery pack that uses ordinary table-variety salt following an upgrade which has transformed its previously small trial batteries up to a 60kWh capacity. The upgrade came after Altech established a strategic joint venture with Germany’s Fraunhofer IKTS, which had initially developed battery packs with 5kWh and 10kWh capacities for testing.

Venus Metals has kicked off its maiden reverse-circulation drill campaign at its Youanmi lithium project where lithium-bearing pegmatites were recently discovered at its highly-compelling Deep South lithium prospect. The Deep South lithium prospect sits 44km south of the Youanmi Gold Mine, which is about 450km north-east of Perth in Western Australia’s rugged Murchison region.

The complex mineralisation at Strickland Metals’ Marwari trend is unravelling to reveal a 2.6km-long corridor with similar gold enrichment style to that seen at Millrose – which the company sold for $61 million. The corridor contains six leads that have seen little drilling to date. The company is planning to get its drill bit in the ground in April.

Ora Banda Mining’s Sand King deposit near Kalgoorlie is firming as the preferred site for its second underground gold mine following significant high-grade results from its first-phase drill campaign. Assays from the first 17 holes sunk at the operation produced grades considered favourable for underground mining after drilling extended the mineralised system to 1km of strike and 300m below surface.

An immune system protein being developed by Radiopharm Theranostics has for the first time been shown to have the potential to detect and target a specific cellular marker found in a wide range of cancers. The company’s monoclonal antibody known as “DUNP19”, is a first-in-class therapy designed to track down, image and destroy cancer cells in human patients.

88 Energy is eyeing up contingent resources in Alaska as it prepares to flow test two reservoir intervals in its Hickory-1 well, both of which showed strong hydrocarbon indicators during drilling. If the tests are successful, the company hopes the results will lead to the conversion of some of the prospective resource to the higher-confidence contingent category.

ChemX Materials has been granted a vital patent in Australia for its 100 per cent-owned proprietary disruptive “HiPurA” high-purity alumina process as it eyes commercialisation options. The granted patent opens the pathway to global commercialisation of the company’s scalable and modular system, which it plans to take to pilot testing with plant commissioning planned for the second half of this year.

Larvotto Resources’ $8m acquisition of the Hillgrove project in NSW comes with a million ounces of gold, Australia’s biggest antimony resource, gold-laced tailings and a mothballed processing plant and exploration package that has soaked up $200m. The project was put on the chopping block by administrators when Red River Resources experienced a fall-of-ground event at its Thalanga base metals mine in Queensland and never recovered.

Red Metal Ltd’s “metallurgy-first” approach to defining the potential of its unusual rare earths discovery in Queensland has paid early dividends, with tests showing extraction levels of up to 90 per cent on two key elements. Its Sybella project represents a potentially new deposit style for Australia – and possibly the world – with its rare earths hosted by partly weathered and fresh granite extending through a 12km-by-3km area.