Public Company News

Impact Minerals is off and racing in its WA nickel hunt, with the company identifying a wealth of targets across the state’s prospective South West Mineral Field and launching into an extensive program of surface sampling at its key projects. Impact controls over 1,900sq.km of ground between Northam and Corrigin, east of Perth, said to host a number of Julimar-style nickel-PGE targets.

Leading ASX-listed pure helium play, Blue Star Helium continues to expand its landholding around one of the world’s highest-grade helium producing fields in Colorado, USA, ahead of its planned drilling start in the next quarter. The company has now more than doubled its tenure near the old Model Dome helium field in the past 12 months with its latest addition of nearly 33,000 net acres.

Novo Resources has upped the ante at its Beatons Creek gold mine near Nullagine in WA’s Pilbara region, with the Nullagine operation pushing out more than 5,000 ounces of gold in May. Interestingly, over 60 per cent of the gold recovered in the plant comes via the nuggets and coarse gold captured in the gravity circuit from the company’s conglomerate ores.

Comet Resources has hit the ground running in northern Mexico with a drill rig already pushing out diamond core from the company’s Santa Teresa gold project. The company has designed more than 2,000 metres of diamond drilling to test the historical mining area, with exploration targeting a mass of quartz veins and stockworks which have previously returned assays of more than 950 g/t gold.

ASX-listed junior explorer, Strickland Metals has picked up a strategic slice of the revered Yandal greenstone belt in WA that complements its flagship Horse Well gold project immediately to the north. The Perth-based company acquired a 75 per cent interest in a cluster of exploration licences making up the Yandal East gold project from Renegade Exploration for a mix of shares and cash.

Coda Minerals looks to have unearthed a new IOCG discovery at Emmie Bluff in South Australia. The company’s maiden drill hole has bulls-eyed over 200 metres of intense hematitic and sulphidic alteration suggesting that Coda may now be probing a massive mineralised system, sending the company’s share price skyrocketing, up by more than 235 per cent in daily trade.

WA-focused gold and lithium explorer Aruma Resources is firing up the drill rigs in the second half of 2021 with maiden drilling programs planned for prime locales in the Pilbara and south of Norseman. The work includes keenly anticipated follow-up drilling at the emerging Saltwater gold project, south-east of Paraburdoo.

South Australia-focused explorer Indiana Resources has launched into a 3,600m aircore drilling campaign in the prospective Gawler Craton. The drilling is along strike from the company’s Minos prospect where the company previously reported multiple stellar drill hits including 38m going 6.54 grams per tonne gold. Assay results from more recent drilling at Minos are due soon and diamond drilling is also on the cards.

A review of historical drilling at its Ngalia Basin project in the Northern Territory has served up shallow uranium, vanadium and strontium mineralised zones for Eclipse Metals. Intercepts including 0.5m going 960 parts per million uranium and 570 ppm strontium from just 1m depth and a zone stretching over 11km of strike caught the eye. Seven untested radiometric target areas were also delineated.

Adriatic Metals has secured an exploration permit for additional mineral concession areas at its developing Vares silver-zinc-lead project in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The dual ASX and London-listed company was awarded the concession areas covering 32 square kilometres last year and has already completed an initial heliborne magnetics and radiometric geophysical survey across the new ground-holdings.

Emu NL is currently building a substantial copper target in WA’s emerging South West Mineral Field, with recent surface sampling at its Viper project outlining copper mineralisation along nearly four kilometres of strike. Sampling extended both east and west of the high-grade Netty copper mine and also returned anomalous levels of nickel and cobalt, pointing to a deeper sulphidic target.

WA-focused explorer St George Mining has launched into a 10,000m drilling blitz targeting new copper and gold discoveries along 35km of prospective stratigraphy at the Paterson project in the state’s north. The maiden reverse circulation program is aimed at emulating recent discoveries in the region that include Rio Tinto’s Winu project hosting some 503Mt in resources going 0.45 per cent copper-equivalent.