Public Company News

Oil explorer 88 Energy has bought into more West Texas oil acreage, further expanding its Longhorn project footprint. The company’s new oil-producing fields will be further drilled to bring its Longhorn production to 500 barrels of oil equivalent per day by the end of the year. The company’s non-operating interest in Longhorn will support its exploration activities further north in Alaska.

Infinity Lithium says recent meetings with newly-elected regional political leaders have emphasised and reinforced the continued collaboration driving the advancement of its San José lithium project in Spain. The project, near the town of Cáceres in the Extremadura region, boasts one of Europe's leading JORC-compliant hard-rock lithium deposits, with an indicated and inferred resource base of 111 million tonnes at 0.61 per cent lithium oxide.

Galan Lithium’s DFS shows its Hombre Muerto West lithium brine play in Argentina churning out an average annual EBITDA of AU$124 million a year for 40 years … and that’s just “phase one”. The company says initial annual production targeting a high-quality lithium chloride product will deliver a US$460 million (AU$692 million) net present value and pave the way to fund further significant expansions.

European-focused Altech Batteries has engaged a group of suppliers with extensive backgrounds in automation and robotics to help power its move into the next phase of plant construction as part of its Cerenergy battery project in Saxony, Germany. Management says the design of the plant is aimed at completing one battery cell every 45 seconds as the project’s definitive feasibility study continues to gather momentum.

St George Mining has fired up the drill rig in its maiden nickel-copper hunt at its Ajana project east of Geraldton in Western Australia’s Mid West region. The company is plunging about 3000m into a duo of intriguing geophysical anomalies in the heart of the underexplored Northampton mineral field that is prospective for Julimar-style intrusive-related nickel-copper-platinum group mineralisation.

AVZ has reeled in monster lithium hits from the final 36 holes of a 53-hole resource drill-out of the Roche Dure deposit at its Manono project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The latest results include an extraordinary 342m at 1.86 per cent lithium oxide from 208m. The remarkable ore body stretches more than 1.8km and remains open along strike and at depth.

Classic Minerals’ Kat Gap processing plant in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt region has secured a key endorsement for its efficient approach to gravity gold recovery after an independent evaluation of the company’s circuit design. An independent reviewer found that the company’s bench and pilot-scale tests indicate its current configuration is well suited to maximise the recovery of gravity-recoverable gold.

ABx Group’s 83 per cent-owned subsidiary Alcore has been boosted by the arrival of a second $2.7 million instalment of funding from the Australian Government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative. Management says the funding will go towards the company’s planned $16.4 million aluminium bath recycling plant at Bell Bay in Tasmania, in addition to supporting its pilot plant on the NSW Central Coast.

A scoping study on Auric Mining’s Munda gold deposit in Western Australia’s Goldfields region supports the potential for open-pit mining and the processing of ore at an existing toll treatment plant, highlighting the potential for “significant accumulated cashflow”, even at low gold prices. The company’s study also outlined a cashflow surplus of $76.9 million under the base-case scenario.

Critical metals explorer Reach Resources has uncovered more high-grade niobium from surface sampling at its Wabli Creek project in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region. New rock-chip results, peaking at 10.3 per cent niobium oxide, were taken 400m from previous sampling of a 1.5km mapped pegmatite that returned 14.3 per cent niobium oxide, suggesting Reach has its foot on the tail of a potential stacked pegmatite swarm.

Alma Metals has expanded the reach of its Briggs copper project in Central Queensland, with its latest assays extending the known limits by more than 150m from the boundary of its current inferred resource. The company has revealed its latest drillhole produced a 366m intersection going 0.23 per cent copper and 28 parts per million molybdenum from just 6m.

Image Resources has tabled a prefeasibility study on its proposed new Bidaminna mineral sands project in WA that estimates a total EBITDA for its contemplated 10.5-year mine life of $379 million. Management says it will cost $194 million to build the mine which should yield a net present value of about the same figure.