Public Company News

A land access and exploration agreement between Kalia Ltd and Bougainville locals has brought the minerals rich PNG island a step closer to reviving its former mining glory. The signing represents the first significant endorsement of the new Bouganville mining act in the now autonomous country that vests all mining rights with customary land owners. Kalia now has a serious first mover advantage.

After failing to hit target depth at all three maiden drill holes at its alluring Chile Gold project due to technical failures, Perth based ASX listed explorer Emu N.L has received a temporary setback and has remobilised a new drilling contractor at the project. Emu is about to test their intriguing theory of a large gold system sitting under a geological "steam cap" in a region that is rich with world class players.

After experiencing frightening stripping ratios in 2017 at the Wiluna Gold project, Blackham Resources now appear to have unearthed enough high-grade ore to produce a solid 2018. The company mined almost as much gold in the last month of 2018 as the entire September quarter and is building high-grade stockpiles for the first time in almost a year.

ASX-listed MGC Pharmaceuticals will fast track an Australian operational base to cultivate medicinal marijuana after the federal government announced a plan to legalise exports of cannabis-based medicines. MGC said the regulatory changes, expected to be in place from February, would allow it to establish a pharmaceutical grade medicinal cannabis cultivation strategy to target key export markets.

Medical marijuana company MGC Pharmaceuticals has launched its first “Derma Plus” skin repair product which has been specifically developed to treat mild forms of psoriasis and has hit the shelves for sale through MGC’s website and existing eCommerce platforms. The product is available in Australasia, the European Union and the lucrative North American market, where 29 states and counting have legalised marijuana for medicinal use.

Northern Minerals has swelled its war chest by $9.74m with a debt and equity program to further develop and expand the life of its Browns Range rare earths project near Halls Creek in the north of Western Australia. The Perth-based junior revealed that it has long-term mining aspirations to increase the life of the full scale, expanded project from 11 years to 20 years.

DroneShield has secured critical radio-frequency safety certification for its DroneGun anti-drone countermeasure device. The new approval allows DroneGun to be used within specific frequencies to intercept, jam and retrieve invasive drones deployed for nefarious purposes. The latest approval satisfies a number of international requests from major defence and government procurement agencies.

New assay results from the Mt Remarkable gold project, 200km south of Kununurra, suggest 100%-owner King River Copper has barely scratched the surface of this forgotten gold field in the East Kimberley. Gold mineralisation on the Trudi vein, which recently produced an 11-metre interval at 27.9 g/t gold, is now shown to extend over a strike length of 1km, three times its previously known extent.

Hammer Metals’ recent farm in to the Mt Frosty copper-gold joint venture with Glencore in Queensland is looking like one of the deals of the year after turning out another batch of excellent assays from the maiden drill program. The Mt Isa-focused explorer this week reported a shallow, 5-metre interval assaying 7.34% copper and 3.75 g/t gold from the final hole in the program.

Reedy Lagoon Corporation has successfully raised $3.5 million to fund a drilling campaign to test some alluring conductors within salty underground aquifers in the United States. The ASX-listed company has also acquired Nevada Lithium, an American player that holds three lithium projects in strategically-located parts of America that are approximately 200km from Tesla’s Gigafactory.

Subsea drone company Aquabotix has added two new distributors to an expanding global network that has seen 10 new partners come onboard in the past four months. Just one week after the launch of its new Integra AUV/ROV drone, the ASX-listed company welcomed Japan to its portfolio as it casts the sales net for its products on a wider arc into Australasian and Asia Pacific markets.

MGC Pharma is aiming to hit a series of new highs in 2018 with a number of medicinal and cosmetic cannabis products hitting the shelves in the new year as the company shifts into production phase. The Perth-listed company is moving into the final countdown on the launchpad to the release of its first medical marijuana product to designed treat severe cases of epilepsy.