Public Company News

Northern Minerals has made the leap from explorer to producer after turning out its first rare earth carbonate at the Browns Range project in the Kimberley region of WA. Both the beneficiation and hydrometallurgical circuits are now load commissioned for steady state production. The company is also hunting for additional resources of heavy rare earth mineralisation at Browns Range with a focus on the exciting Dazzler-Iceman discoveries.

Classic Minerals latest drill program near Southern Cross has delivered in spades with a spectacular 10m drill intersection going nearly an ounce to the tonne gold from just 28m deep at the rapidly advancing Kat Gap prospect. The new Kat Gap drill results included a 2m section grading a whopping 116.1g/t gold from 31m and the Lady Lila prospect also delivered 6m @ 9.57g/t gold from 26m down-hole.

King River Copper has completed a scoping study that demonstrates the potential for its Windsor project in Western Australia’s East Kimberley region. Windsor is potentially the only major fluorite deposit in Australia and according to King River’s latest scoping study, it is capable of producing positive cashflows .The company is now proceeding with a pre-feasibility study that will allow it to report ore reserves and an economic analysis.

Delecta Limited has purchased the high grade Highline cobalt-copper project from a private vendor in the emerging Goodsprings mining district, 50km southwest of Las Vegas in southern Nevada, USA. The historical mine produced cobalt up to an eye-watering 12.45% and an average copper grade of 35%. The claim area has been sitting idle for nearly a century and has seen pretty much no modern exploration.

Australian Potash could enjoy better freight costs at its Lake Wells potash project thanks to a government funded upgrade of up to 100km of the Great Central Road to the east of the town of Laverton. The company will work with the Shire of Laverton to consider the feasibility of sealing the Lake Wells access road, which would give the project a 300km all-weather bitumen sealed road to the Leonora rail-head.

Babylon Pump & Power has secured a $670,000 contract to supply and install power generation and dewatering pumping equipment for BHP for an initial six month period. Works are scheduled to begin immediately with commissioning scheduled for November 2018. The company is optimistic that the contract will continue on a rolling basis at the end of the initial term.

Spectrum Metals has paid $200,000 to buy the historical First Hit gold mine, located 50km west of Menzies in the Goldfields region of WA. The mine was last worked in 2002 and the company has defined numerous walk-up drill targets for delineating more high grade mineralisation. Spectrum will raise $600,000 to underwrite exploration of its WA gold assets, by issuing shares to sophisticated investors at 0.4c per share.

Tyranna Resources has discovered wide graphite mineralisation at sought after grades at the Yeltana prospect located only 125km from the port of Whyalla in South Australia. Results up to 21.05m @ 9.28% total graphitic carbon from 171.75m down-hole points to the deposit potentially having some scale. The company is planning to undertake mineralogical analyses of core samples for graphite flake size to assess the economic potential of the product.

ASX listed Kairos Minerals’ ongoing exploration at its Croydon project in the Pilbara region of WA has extended the strike length of the gold bearing conglomerate to over 4km after discovering visible gold in stream sediment pan samples. Further exploration being carried out includes additional stream sediment sampling, metal detecting, detailed mapping and stratigraphic RC and diamond drilling.

Calima Energy is poised to benefit from Shell’s decision to proceed with its massive CAD$40bn Canadian LNG project in British Columbia that will source gas from the Montney oil and gas formation to produce an initial 14 million tonnes of LNG per annum. Calima is planning to start drilling one vertical well in the Montney to provide data and two horizontal wells that will be placed on extended production testing before the end of this year.

BlackEarth Minerals’ final assays from drilling at the Haja deposit in southern Madagascar continue to demonstrate very thick and consistent zones of graphite mineralisation. A maiden resource estimate is due to be released next month after the company hit a 90m intersection grading 5.7%TGC. BlackEarth is in the final stages of planning a trenching program expected to start later this month.

St George Mining has reported that recent down hole electromagnetic surveying at the Investigators prospect has outlined several strong, new off-hole conductors that it considers highly prospective for defining massive nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation. The new conductors are located down-plunge of a previously intersected mineralised ultramafic rock sequence and may indicate the potential for a significant extension to the narrow, but high-grade mineralisation previously located at Investigators.