Public Company News

ASX-listed Aurora Labs has succeeded in upgrading the fume extraction capability of its flagship RMP-1 prototype 3D printer, maintaining its competitive performance edge in the rapidly developing 3D printing market. Importantly, the company says it has done so without any reduction in print quality. Aurora said the fume extraction upgrade which was delivered on time and budget is part of its 12-month development pathway.

AVZ Minerals is set to expand its lithium resource at its Manono project in the DRC with drilling below the current pit floor delivering an incredible 279.2 metre intercept grading 1.45 per cent lithium oxide from only 24.06m down-hole. With lithium companies currently enjoying a resurgence, AVZ continues to show that it may well have the biggest and best undeveloped lithium deposit in the world today.

PolarX is edging closer to the development of its copper-gold deposits in Alaska, with results from its recent drilling campaign at the Zackly skarn discovery highlighting the potential of the project and triggering the planning of a scoping study. The new study will include metallurgical test work and an economic evaluation of the metal-rich assets in the mountains of the northern US state.

Further metallurgical test work on Lindian Resources’ high-grade sample ores from its Bouba conglomerate bauxite deposit in Guinea has come up trumps again. The company says digestion test work following up on recent positive results from dry screening of the Bouba ores showed they were suited to both low temperature and high temperature digestion settings in Bayer process alumina refineries.

Iron ore monolith, Rio Tinto has signed up to a 3-year software-as-a-service contract with ASX-listed tech player, K2fly. Rio will make use of K2fly’s Infoscope software platform to manage very sensitive heritage information across its iron ore mining operations in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. K2fly said the total contract value for the deal with Rio was set at A$719,000.

Novo Resources is poised to join the growing ranks of WA’s gold producers having received its final approvals from the state government for the commencement of operations at its Golden Eagle plant south-east of Nullagine. Mining has already commenced at the nearby Beatons Creek deposits and with the commissioning of the operation now underway, the company is preparing for its much-anticipated maiden gold pour.

Blackstone has hit massive sulphide vein mineralisation in multiple drill holes at its King Snake nickel prospect in Vietnam while vectoring in on several high-priority electromagnetic targets, or EM plates, across the company’s developing Ta Khoa Nickel project in Vietnam. Blackstone’s KS20-02 diamond core drill hole tagged 9.4 metres of sulphide mineralisation, including 1.18m of a massive sulphide vein.

ASX-listed gold and copper explorer, White Cliff Minerals has identified several high-priority gold targets at its historic Reedy South gold project in WA after completing a significant aeromagnetic survey flown across the entire Reedy South tenement package. The company says the aeromagnetic survey was commissioned in order to improve its understanding of what may be going on under the soil cover at Reedy South.

ASX-listed Horizon Minerals has shuffled its Kalgoorlie based tenement portfolio around and it appears to have come out with a few trump cards as the company pushes ahead with its regional consolidation strategy, focusing on WA’s rich Goldfields region. Horizon said its slew of recent deals is value-accretive for the company.

Native Mineral Resources has expanded its Palmerville copper-gold project in north Queensland following the grant of an additional exploration licence on the eastern margins of its tenement holding in the region that hosts the recent Leane’s copper discovery. The company now holds over 1,820 square kilometres of the mineral-rich Chillagoe Formation which hosts the nearby Mungana, Red Dome and Griffith’s deposits.

Venus Metals and joint venture partner, Rox Resources, have posted an outstanding set of metallurgical results from the Grace gold discovery in WA. First-pass, bench-scale test work on bulk samples from the discovery at Youanmi has returned stellar recoveries of up to 99.8 per cent of the contained gold in fresh rock samples.

Lithium Australia’s application for a US patent for one of its proprietary lithium extraction technologies, SiLeach, has been approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The Perth-based company also received a notice of acceptance from IP Australia for the same patent application, which is expected to be granted at the end of April.