Public Company News

Barton Gold has teased out more gold around the northern edges of the Perseverance pit floor at the Tarcoola gold project in South Australia. The strikes continue a run of success for Barton following the gold zone discovered at Perseverance West last year. Notable shallow drill hits were recorded including 1m grading 2.51 g/t gold from 26m and 1m grading 7 g/t gold from 37m.

Victory Mines has continued to make the case for possible northern extensions to the gold lode that was mined some years ago in the old Coogee open pit at its Coogee gold project near Kalgoorlie. Latest assays include 4 metres going 9.34 grams per tonne gold from 175 metres that hosts a 2m intersection grading 16.15 g/t from 176m.

Blackstone Minerals has locked in Tier 1 engineering, mineral processing and metallurgical consultants Wood and ALS to perform critical roles in the delivery of a definitive feasibility study at its Ta Khoa nickel refinery in Vietnam. The consultants will aim to provide project management, engineering, cost estimation, execution planning services and hydrometallurgical testing for the Ta Khoa nickel refinery.

Perth-based Lithium Australia’s wholly owned subsidiary, VSPC is now producing commercial quality lithium titanium oxide lithium battery anode powder. VSPC says its LTO exceeds industry performance benchmarks and that further research and development, including work on niobium-based anode powders, is underway. Lithium Australia is building an armoury of lithium battery technology in readiness for the lithium boom.

ASX-listed explorer, Venus Metals has substantially extended its high-grade mineralisation at the Link prospect within its Youanmi project. Latest drilling has intercepted high grade gold intercepts 200m down plunge of the existing resource, demonstrating strong continuity of mineralisation. These results point to a potential increase to the current resource estimate with many drill results still pending.

Newly listed Askari Metals has nailed its first field campaign at the company’s Horry project in the mineral rich Kimberley region with high grade copper and gold rock chip samples that have allowed it to map initial copper mineralisation over 400m in one location. Best copper results were 3.67 per cent, 3.13 per cent and 1.12 per cent and one gold sample yielded 13 grams per tonne.

Empire Energy is ramping up its activities in the Beetaloo Sub-basin in the Northern Territory with its Carpentaria-1 well securing an encouraging post shut in average flow rate of 0.364 million cubic feet of gas per day. The result is up 45 per cent from the pre-shut in rate. The company says the results appear to underline the development potential of its Beetaloo Sub-basin acreage in the NT.

Horizon Minerals has officially taken control of Aurenne Group’s Cannon, Glandore and Cowarna gold projects, comprised of 22 granted tenement licenses covering approximately 180 square kilometres within a short trucking distance from Horizon’s 100 per cent owned Boorara gold project in Kalgoorlie. Resource and reserve models are well advanced at the Cannon underground gold mine providing a near-term development opportunity for the company.

Okapi Resources has wasted no time in producing a maiden uranium resource at its Tallahassee uranium project in Colorado, USA. The company only finalised the acquisition in August and has already announced a maiden resource of 25.4 million tonnes going at 490 ppm U3O8 for 27.6 million pounds of yellowcake. Plans are now underway to commence a 10,000-metre maiden drilling program to bolster the resource further.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining is set to pocket up to $12 million following the closing date of its initial public offering on the 26th of October. The company will use the money to follow up on some bonanza historical gold hits east of Kalgoorlie that inexplicably were never run to ground. Kalgoorlie Gold will spin out of Ardea Resources who has been quietly amassing some serious gold tenure amongst its massive nickel holdings.

ABx Group’s chemical refining subsidiary, Alcore has modelled up a processing flowsheet designed to produce aluminium fluoride using cheap smelter waste as the feedstock. Alcore’s engineers have proposed a commercial 10,000 tonne per year aluminium fluoride plant using the new technology’s proprietary process which the company believes will deliver benefits for Australasian smelters currently reliant on imports.

Venus Metals has bagged up 1500 soil samples and 58 rock chips that it will now lab test for nickel, copper, rare earths, gold, platinum, lithium and related minerals at its Managaroon north project in the Gascoyne region of WA. The samples have since been submitted for the multi-element analysis and the company is planning a follow-up program based on the results.