Public Company News

Connected IO is looking to tap into the growing internet of things market, where global spending could pass the USD$1 trillion mark by 2022 as businesses become aware of its potential to cut costs and provide improved data for decisions. Connected IO reported total cash receipts of AUD$560,000 in the second quarter of the 2019 financial year, up 26% over the previous quarter.

Nusantara Resources has kicked off a program of deep exploratory diamond drilling at the Puncak Selatan prospect, adjacent to its flagship Awak Mas gold resource on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia. The work follows on from impressive surface trenching results and is aimed at expanding the optimised limits of the proposed Awak Mas open pit, potentially increasing the project’s mine life and economics.

PharmAust’s wholly-owned subsidiary Epichem will continue to provide its synthetic and medicinal chemistry expertise to leading research and development organisation Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, or “DNDi”, which extended its current contract for an 11th year. The contract extension is expected to generate up to $1.24 million in revenues for Epichem this year.

Lithium Australia has mapped three swarms of outcropping lithium-rich pegmatites over a total strike length of 2.5km and widths to 50 metres at its Youanmi project near Sandstone in the Murchison region of WA. The company will use recently acquired high-resolution geophysical surveys of the region, along with its recent geological mapping program, to delineate lithium drilling targets at the broader Youanmi project.

Image Resources has completed the ramp-up of its Boonanarring project just north of Perth to full production in just two months, well in advance of the planned six month ramp-up schedule in the bankable feasibility study. The company has also shipped a full complement of about 20,000 tonnes of heavy mineral sands this month and expects to achieve positive project cash flow before the end of the current quarter.

Caravel Minerals has reported high recoveries of copper averaging 96.1% at coarse grind sizes from a metallurgical test program carried out on diamond core ore composites at its namesake project in the Wheatbelt of WA. The results eclipse the 92% recovery used in the 2016 scoping study and will now feed into the company’s updated scoping study report, which is due for release next month.

Kalia Limited has delineated a new exploration target at its Teosiri prospect on Bougainville Island in PNG, with rock chip sampling turning up assays of 2.76 g/t gold, 4.9g/t silver, 0.32% copper, 1.22% lead and 2.4% zinc. The company is also finalising an independent geophysical analysis report from a detailed airborne survey completed last year, which will guide future exploration programs across its Toro JV tenements.

88 Energy has spudded its highly anticipated Winx-1 exploration well in Alaska’s famed “North Slope” oil province that targets a gross, best estimate, prospective resource of about 400 million barrels of oil across multiple stacked objectives, including the Nanushuk Formation, which is the primary target of the well. Winx-1 is adjacent to Oil Search’s Horseshoe discovery that hosts between 500 million and 1.2 billion barrels of oil.

Aurora Labs has announced that its multi-level Rapid Manufacturing Technology is able to 3D print about 113kg of metal parts per day, an impressive 55 times faster than the general market speed. The company has flagged the potential to further increase its print speeds too by using two sub-units in its Alpha machine, which could almost double the speed capacity of the single unit configuration.

Lithium Australia will carry out a preliminary study into the production of lithium-ion battery components using lithium micas sourced from its wholly-owned Sadisdorf project in Germany. This will involve the extraction of lithium phosphate utilising the company’s proprietary SiLeach process. Cassiterite mineralisation will also be processed into a saleable tin concentrate to add more value for the project.

Great Southern’s rock chip samples taken from weathered and oxidised gossanous outcrop at the SW-1 prospect of its emerging Edinburgh Park project in northern Queensland has returned high grade results of up to 10.6g/t gold, 315g/t silver and 1.95% copper. Further mapping and sampling programs are being carried out to better define the polymetallic prospect.

Vonex is making solid progress towards commercialisation of its ground-breaking Oper8tor communications App with the company poised to make a “white label” version available to businesses next month. The company also plans to make the iOS and Android versions of the Oper8tor Conference app available for download in Australia in March, ahead of a commercial launch in Europe by July.