Public Company News

Hammer Metals has generated high-grade gold and copper results from a rock chip sampling program at its Malbon project near Mount Isa, Queensland. The El Questro prospect produced values up to 99.4g/t gold and 5.96% copper in iron-rich quartz veining and requires follow up work. Numerous copper-bearing zones with gold mineralisation were also defined at the Mt Philp Breccia project to the west.

Australian Potash has made its thickest intersection of productive basal sands whilst drilling two production bores at its Lake Wells sulphate of potash, or “SOP”, project near Laverton, WA. The second bore intersected 62m of high-yielding sands in the target palaeochannel and has flowed brine at indicative rates above the project requirement of 15 litres per second.

Novo Resources has entered into a $43m farm-in and JV agreement with diversified Japanese trading company Sumitomo Corporation to accelerate development of its Egina gold project located near Port Hedland, WA. Sumitomo can earn up to 40% in the project by spending the monies over three years, with minimum expenditure of about $7m per phase of work defined by programs and budgets developed by Novo.

King River Resources’ ongoing metallurgical test work for its giant Speewah specialty metals project in WA’s Kimberley region has successfully produced an iron oxide product assaying 67% iron with low contaminants. The work has also produced an intermediate titanium product assaying 80% titanium dioxide that the company will seek to upgrade using various purification methods.

Venus Metals has divested its 50% stake in the Yalgoo magnetite project near Geraldton, WA, to Iranian-based EPC contractor FIJV Pty Ltd for $2.5m and will use the funds to evaluate its gold, vanadium and base metal assets elsewhere in the State. The company will retain exposure to FIJV’s plans to develop open cut magnetite mines in the Yalgoo district via a 0.625% royalty on future iron ore concentrate sales.

Strike Energy has spudded its highly anticipated West Erregulla-2 well in the Perth Basin, WA, that is targeting up to 1.16 trillion cubic feet of gas in the primary target Kingia High Cliff and 7.2 million barrels of conventional oil in the Jurassic Cattamarra Coal Measures. The well, which is being drilled to a total depth of 5,200m, will also intersect a conventional gas target in the Basal Wagina sandstones.

Great Southern Mining has signed an agreement to acquire the historical high-grade Cox’s Find gold mine near Laverton, WA, that produced about 77,000 ounces of gold at an average grade of 21.94g/t gold between 1935 and 1942. The company plans to apply modern exploration techniques to the project with a focus on step-out drilling from the open pit and underground workings.

Legend Mining has recorded encouraging multi-element geochemical assays from its latest infill aircore drilling of an EM anomaly at the Worsley prospect in the Fraser Range, WA. Best results included 28m @ 0.17% zinc and 1.37g/t silver from 40m down-hole, which incorporated a higher-grade section of 4m @ 0.71% zinc and 1.71g/t silver from 52m and may indicate proximity to a volcanogenic massive sulphide ore system.

Drilling has indicated that Hot Chili’s Cortadera copper-gold deposit in Chile may have greater growth potential than anticipated after confirming a large northern extension to the main porphyry centre, Cuerpo 3. The company is completing a second diamond hole to test the extent of a potential higher-grade core at Cuerpo 3 and plans to drill two further holes to determine the potential for an increasing grade profile with depth.

Spectrum Metals’ Phase II drilling campaign at the Penny West project near Youanmi, WA, has returned top results of 1m @ 180.3 g/t gold from 206m down-hole and 11m @ 11.7g/t gold from 229m from the first holes drilled at the Penny North prospect. The results have already doubled the down-dip extent of the Penny North lode on this section while results are pending for two up-dip holes on the same drill section.

Neometals has completed a scoping study for its proposed lithium-ion battery recycling and processing initiative, with results showing encouraging economic outcomes for an initial 10-year plant life. The company will process about 18,000 tonnes of exhausted LIBs per annum and churn out a pre-tax NPV of $308m and IRR of 72%, with a CAPEX cost of $92m and payback in less than two years.

St George Mining has delineated five new, high priority exploratory drilling targets for base metal mineralisation along the Cathedrals Belt at its Mt Alexander project located near Leonora in the Goldfields region of WA. The new targets include three virtually unexplored regions at the West End and Bullets prospects and two strong responses located down-dip and along strike of the existing Investigators mineralisation.