Public Company News

Blackstone Minerals is set to acquire a 90% interest in the advanced Ta Khoa nickel project in northern Vietnam from AMR Nickel Limited over a 12-month period costing AUD$1.6m in cash and scrip. The project includes an existing 450,000 tonne per annum concentrator and is located in a prospective, underexplored district that contains numerous massive and disseminated sulphide occurrences with nickel, copper, cobalt and PGEs.

Altech Chemicals has reached another milestone on its journey towards becoming a significant high purity alumina, producer with the raising of the first steel column at its plant site in Johor, Malaysia. The plant in the Tanjung Industrial complex will produce up to 4,500 tonnes of HPA from very pure kaolin clays sourced from the company’s shallow open pit mine near Meckering in WA.

Massive UK investment fund, M & G Investments, who has a whopping £286b under management, has stumped up $6.3m to cornerstone Perth small cap, Troy Resources’ latest capital raise. Troy will use the money to develop a resource at its exciting, high grade, near mine exploration play in South America known as Ohio Creek, that looks set to turbocharge the economics of its operating Karouni gold mine.

MGC Pharmaceuticals has made the first shipment of its medical cannabis-derived formulation for the relief of seizures associated with severe epilepsy into the UK. The company’s UK distribution partners Grow Biotech and IPS have already received initial prescriptions for the drug. This early interest is encouraging if the company’s prediction that the UK medical cannabis market will grow to €8.8bn by 2028.

Adriatic Metals has intersected very encouraging, thick intersections of base and precious metals mineralisation from drilling in its new Concession area at the northern end of the exciting Rupice prospect in Bosnia. The new results include 30m @ 9.7% zinc, 5.2% lead, 265g/t silver, 4.6g/t gold, 0.4% copper and 43% barite from 246m down-hole that will be incorporated into a mineral resource estimate for Rupice later this year.

Artemis Resources has estimated an indicated resource of 152,000t @ 0.63% nickel and 0.47% copper for contained resources of 965t of nickel and 713t of copper at its Ruth Well project in WA’s West Pilbara region. In line with its new gold focus, the company will undertake a heritage survey over the Monarch and Conqueror targets in the current quarter. Both targets are within trucking distance of its Radio Hill processing plant.

PharmAust can now assess dosing strategies for the upcoming Phase II clinical trials for its anti-cancer drug Monepantel in dogs after receiving further positive results from the ongoing Phase I trial. Serum levels of both Monepantel and its major metabolite, monepantel sulfone, exceeded the predicted anti-cancer activity target values in dogs administered just one tablet per day.

MGC Pharmaceuticals has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with UK medical cannabis leaders Grow Biotech and IPS, who have an extensive network of 5500 pharmacies across the country. The distributors will ensure that MGC’s products are registered with the all relevant authorities and manage the process of importing the products, through to delivering them to patients at home or selected pharmacies.

Buru Energy has spudded its highly anticipated Ungani-6 horizontal production well that is aimed at increasing the ASX-listed company’s oil production in the vastly underexplored Canning Basin in WA’s north. It will be completed to intersect the target Ungani Dolomite reservoir before the rig moves on to drill the Ungani-7 production well. A coiled tubing unit will then be mobilised to drill the horizontal sections of both wells.

Hawkstone Mining has generated more wide, high-grade mineralisation in separate ore horizons from diamond drilling at the Northern Mineralised Zone of its Big Sandy lithium clay project in Arizona, US. Better results included 26m @ 2,205 ppm lithium from 15m down-hole and 21m @ 2,203 ppm lithium from 10m down-hole from the Upper Zone, within two separate vertical drill holes.

Vonex’s decision to retain an iron ore royalty is poised to pay off after it received the first notification of royalties from the Koolyanobbing iron ore project. Koolyanobbing project owner Mineral Resources plans to ramp up production from 6Mtpa to 8Mtpa by the first quarter of the 2020 financial year and has started a program to extend its mine life.

MGC Pharmaceuticals is expanding its distribution network through agreements with Australian medicinal cannabis distribution and logistics specialists, Health House International and Cannvalate. The non-exclusive agreements cover MGC’s IMP products and expand the network of clinics and pharmacies from which Special Access Scheme applications for these products may be derived.