Public Company News

Infinity Mining has expanded its foothold in WA’s East Pilbara by nearly 100 square kilometres after acquiring three new tenements to bring its total holding in the region to more than 780sq km. The sites were bought from TasEx Geological Services and include ground considered prospective for volcanic-hosted massive sulphides and shear-hosted gold deposits right next door to Infinity’s Tambourah South lithium project.

A change in strategy appears to be close to paying dividends for Alma Metals after it read the global energy tea leaves and shifted from African coal to instead zero in on a big Queensland copper find. The $13.25 million market-capped company is bearing down on a shallow porphyry deposit at its Briggs copper project, 50km west of Gladstone in Central Queensland.

Surefire Resources is eyeing a November delivery of the prefeasibility study for its Victory Bore vanadium play, clearing the way for the next step in commercialising the project’s massive deposit in Western Australia’s Mid West region. Surefire is also making preliminary plans for further drilling to enable its measured resources to be converted into a JORC-compliant reserve.

Terrain Minerals has unleashed the drill rigs at its Smokebush project in WA’s Mid West region as it tests for lithium in pegmatites at the operation with an 11-hole reverse-circulation campaign over 900m. The company has prioritised seven of the 11 pegmatites identified, which range from about 10m to 15m in width and 200m in length, before shifting undercover in about a 4km area.

Everest Metals is on a mission to add copper to its Revere gold project near Meekatharra, with a diamond drill campaign kicking off just 50km south-east of Sandfire Resources’ DeGrussa copper-gold project. The 1000m program has been designed to test for volcanic-hosted massive sulphides that have been modelled to occur at depth and will include three deep diamond holes sunk to about 350m.

The hits keep coming for American West Metals, with the latest results from drilling at its Storm copper project in Canada showing assays including a 1.5m section at a whopping 7.1 per cent copper from 82.3m. The impressive hit was contained within a 9.1m intercept grading 2.5 per cent copper from 79.3m that was pulled from a wider 67.1m section reading 1.1 per cent copper from just 54.9m.

Reproductive biotechnology company Memphasys has received a boost for its flagship Felix system, with the first global study of its kind rating the novel technology as “best available” for recovering high-quality sperm for IVF following the sperm’s cryopreservation. The study found that from the three sperm-semen separation systems examined, only Felix exhibited significantly lower levels of DNA damage.

Legend Mining is midway through a diamond drilling program targeting two significant nickel-copper sulphide targets at its Octagonal prospect in Western Australia’s Fraser Range – home to IGO’s mammoth Nova-Bollinger nickel-copper-cobalt mine. Legend is bouncing off a slight delay in drilling operations at its first hole, running a downhole electromagnetic survey to pinpoint additional targets, while the rig lines up on the second hole.

Infinity Lithium remains on track to submit the required applications for development of its San José lithium project in Spain – a proposed integrated lithium mining and lithium chemicals processing plant for electric vehicle batteries and the European Union’s second-biggest JORC lithium resource. Regional election results have increased the company’s prospects for getting the project off the ground.

Budding critical materials producer ChemX Materials is set to kick off construction of its high-purity alumina (HPA) pilot plant in Perth’s southern suburbs in Western Australia. Tweaks to the process flow and plant design have slashed infrastructure costs from $2.5 million down to $600,000 for a refined plant capacity of 24 tonnes per annum of HPA destined for the lithium-ion battery market.

Cell therapy cancer-fighter Chimeric Therapeutics is wasting no time on its mission to commercialise its novel potential treatment for glioblastoma. The ASX-listed company was given approval in April for a phase-1B clinical trial of the treatment, which employs the venom of the deathstalker scorpion. The first of multiple sites to enrol patients in the trial has now been revealed in the United States.

Askari Metals has hit several 100m-wide pegmatites with multiple zones of lithium-bearing minerals in phase-two reverse-circulation (RC) drilling at its Uis lithium project in Namibia. While assay results are pending, the company isn’t slowing its exploration efforts, with its next round of drilling – including the project’s first diamond drill holes – slated to begin in just weeks.