Public Company News

Geopacific Resources has acquired 100% direct ownership of the Woodlark gold project in PNG after buying out Kula Gold’s remaining share for a cash and scrip transaction worth about $3.29m. The deal represents exquisite timing for the company, with the gold price nearly 25% higher than that assumed in November’s DFS for Woodlark, which already outlined robust economic metrics and strong margins to develop the project.

88 Energy has all but sewn up the farm-out of the conventional rights at its project known as “Project Icewine” in the famed North Slope oil province in Alaska after its as yet unnamed partner completed all internal approvals. The farm-out is now subject to the execution of closing documents and the transfer of working interests while well planning and permitting is ramping up for drilling in 2020.

Spectrum Metals’ Phase II drilling campaign at the Penny West project near Youanmi, WA, has returned further high-grade gold intersections, with mineralisation now defined over 650 metres of strike to a vertical depth of 230m. Preliminary metallurgical test work from the Penny North ores have been encouraging, with gold recoveries up to 99.2% and free-milling gold potentially amenable to a conventional processing circuit.

Lithium Australia plans to commence drilling to evaluate the potential and geometry of lithium pegmatites at the prospective Youanmi project near Sandstone in the Murchison region of WA, before the end of this month. The company will also carry out work on the higher-grade sections of a defined vanadium resource, which it believes to be amenable to direct leaching to produce vanadium sulphate.

Venus Metals and Rox Resources may be sitting on a high-grade gold deposit at their Currans Find JV gold project near Youanmi, WA, after re-sampling of recent holes turned up a spectacular intersection of 1m @ 72.67g/t gold from 39m within a wider zone of 3m @ 27.5g/t gold. This is significantly higher than the initial assays, which returned 6m @ 9.82g/t gold from 36m.

Volt Resources has secured USD$1 million in working capital from European investor Mr Lars Bader to help finalise the USD$40 million note issue on the Dar es Salaam Stock Exchange. The notes will underpin the Stage 1 development of the company's Bunyu graphite project in Tanzania that has an ore reserve of 127 million tonnes grading 4.4% TGC, most of which is in the Super Jumbo, Jumbo and Large flake categories.

Sovereign Metals has outlined encouraging preliminary metallurgical test work results for its Wofiira rutile prospect in Malawi, East Africa, generating a potentially premium high-quality product, with low impurities, from conventional mineral sands processing. The concentrated ore product contained 96% titanium dioxide at a recovered grade of 1.1% rutile and is on par with many of the world’s leading rutile producers.

AVZ Minerals will control 65% of the Manono lithium-tin project in the south-eastern region of the DRC after paying USD$5.5m to private company Dathomir Mining Resources SARL for an additional 5% stake in the tier-1 deposit. The monies are payable to Dathomir within three years and the agreement will generate an additional NPV of USD$130m for the company based on recent scoping study results.

Neometals’ synthetic zeolite product generated from lithium hydroxide production waste, has held its own against similar industry-leading products from a reference Japanese manufacturer. The company will now proceed with a pilot plant test of its proprietary process in the September quarter of 2019, which will in turn feed into a class 3 engineering study and feasibility study.

Venus Metals has this week pocketed $2.55m and a swag of shares in fellow ASX-listed company Rox Resources after the companies established a 50/50 joint venture agreement for the prospective Youanmi gold mine leases in WA. Several other JV agreements have now also commenced, which focus more on near-mine and regional exploration activities in the underexplored Youanmi greenstone belt.

ASX-listed MGC Pharmaceuticals continues to spread its wings, signing an agreement with Germany’s Mexacare for the distribution of the company’s medical cannabis products to Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Germany’s medical cannabis market alone was worth €133 million in 2018 and is estimated to grow to €7.7 billion by 2028, making it a key emerging market for MGC.

Strike Energy continues to gradually increase gas flow at its Jaws-1 super-deep coal seam gas well in the Cooper Basin, South Australia, as more coal transitions from water to gas production. Pumps have been set to maintain a pressure of 250psi to allow the desorption front to gradually spread outwards into the rest of the reservoir as more coal transitions from water to gas production.