Public Company News

The market doesn’t have long to wait now to find out exactly how much hard cash can be churned out of the world’s largest undeveloped lithium mine as AVZ Minerals says it is 95% through its definitive feasibility study for the giant Manono lithium-tin project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. AVZ is now teetering right on the edge of making that difficult leap from explorer to miner.

Lithium Australia subsidiary, VSPC, is to receive a $1.6m grant as part of a $5m, federally-funded research program to develop "fast charging" lithium-ion batteries for new generation trams with a view to eliminating overhead wires. VSPC will be joined by Australia’s CSIRO, the University of Queensland and Soluna Australia. VSPC, or the “Very Small Particle Company”, is a leader in the lithium battery cathode powder field.

With billions of dollars being ploughed into new battery factories around the globe, Altech Chemicals says that its 4N high purity alumina product will potentially be in even greater demand in the next generation of “solid state” lithium-ion batteries. As the market looks to move away from liquid electrolyte batteries, Altech says its HPA will still be required and potentially in even greater quantities for solid state batteries.

Great Southern Mining has scored a major hit from its maiden exploration program at its Cox’s find deposit, 70km north of Laverton in WA, delivering an ounce to the tonne drill intersection over 5m. Within the 5m intersection there was also an ultra-high-grade section going 143.0g/t gold over a metre.

Middle Island Resources has the wind at its back and prolific investor, Stephen Copulos by its side, as the company launches into a 20,000m drilling blitz across the Sandstone Gold project in WA. The first phase of this program involves 13,000 metres of RC drilling across 14 prospective looking “open pit” gold targets that according to Middle Island, have the potential to lift existing mineral resources ahead of another update to the project’s pre-feasibility study.

Big River Gold has hosted an opening ceremony at the site of its Borborema gold project near the town of Currais Novos in Brazil. The ceremony was attended by local business leaders, community members and politicians who learnt about the project and its impending benefits to the local area. Big River said it is looking to employ some 375 people locally when the project is in full swing.

Venus Metals and Rox Resources have defined an interesting new gold prospect from soil survey results just in. The new soil anomaly is located 4km south of and along strike from the historical Penny West gold mine that Spectrum Resources just offloaded to Ramelius for around $200m. It has a similar geochemical signature to that found in soils over the recent Sovereign gold discovery nearby.

After snapping up over 90% of Azumah Resources shares, private equity firm, Ibaera Capital, will mop up the remaining 10% under the compulsory acquisition provisions in the Corporations Act. Ibaera got to just over 90% last week and told shareholders they would still receive their money for their remaining shares after the compulsory acquisition provisions kick in. It seems that the message hit home, with Ibaera making it to over 93% by Monday.

Spectrum Metals’ share price has jumped 40% from Friday’s close on news of a take-over bid from gold titan, Ramelius Resources which has the blessing of the Spectrum board. The cash and scrip offer represent a 70% premium to Spectrum’s 30-day volume weighted average share price. Ramelius says there are strong synergies between the two companies and the board of Spectrum has endorsed those views.

Horizon Minerals has developed a plan to bank between $2.8m and $5.8m over 8 months from toll treating its gold from Boorara near Kalgoorlie. A feasibility study suggests that open pit mining and toll milling of Horizon’s Regal, Crown Jewel and Royal deposits would only cost around $440k in upfront capital costs. Horizon is looking to toll treat at Golden Mile Milling’s Lakewood plant, 7km to the West.

New modelling work at Hot Chili’s Cortadera copper-gold discovery in Chile has the Perth based company convinced that its resource, just in the existing discovery zone, has the potential to grow into a “tier-1” style deposit that is capable of hosting over 5mt’s of contained copper. A recent deviated drill hole unexpectedly delivered 92m @ 0.5% copper and 0.2 g/t gold at end of hole.

Calidus Resources has jumped on the opportunity to pick up an accommodation village, signalling that it is getting serious about developing its Warrawoona gold project. The accommodation modules will be stored in Marble Bar until all internal and external development approvals are in place. The company has applied for an early works permit to fast track deployment of the camp ahead of receiving final approvals.