Public Company News

Joint venture partners Venus Metals and Rox Resources are continuing to be impressed by their Midway discovery at the duo’s Youanmi gold project with the most recent assays from the current drill campaign reporting new thick high-grade gold intercepts. Headline figures include 6.76m at 15.4 grams per tonne gold from 169.1m and 3.73m at 10.25 g/t gold from 405.8m.

Meeka Metals has confirmed the presence of high-grade gold at its Circle Valley project near Esperance after assays from a diamond drilling campaign produced impressive results and hit gold in every hole. Late last year the company completed a five-hole diamond drilling program aiming to gather data and test a 1200m by 400m gold anomaly that was detected during a previous RC campaign.

RC drilling at PolarX’s based gold-silver project in Nevada, USA has defined structural targets for high-grade gold within a bulk tonnage hydrothermal mineralised system environment. Exploration revealed extensive gold mineralisation associated with weak sulphides at the company’s Star Canyon prospect. Surrounded by large gold-silver heap leach mines the explorer is pursuing bulk tonnage heap leach gold-silver targets.

Venus Metals Corporation’s partner in the East Greenbushes project, IGO Limited, has launched an exploration blitz on its site that sits adjacent to the world-renowned Greenbushes lithium mine. IGO is planning a geochemical survey specifically targeting lithium at the site and expects to take a total of 1350 soil samples at the operation in the South West region of WA.

Near-term nickel producer Estrella is one step closer to delivering its much-needed battery metal to the market. Glencore’s Murrin Murrin operation has received a bulk sample of high-grade nickel from the company’s Spargoville 5A project, 20 kilometres south-west of Kambalda. Estrella says its assays have met all the specifications from Glencore and the processing of the sample has begun.

ASX-listed Valor Resources has expanded its ground in the uranium rich Saskatchewan area in Canada, expanding its Surprise Creek tenure by 20 square kilometres. One of the new tenements comes with a historical showing of 1.2 per cent copper. Despite both new additions being highly prospective for uranium and copper, very little modern exploration has been completed since the 1980s.

A comprehensive exploration campaign has paid off for Ora Banda Mining with the company revealing it has doubled the underground mineral resource at its Riverina gold system to more than 300,000 gold ounces. The gold producer also announced a maiden ore reserve for the Riverina system near Kalgoorlie of 73,000 ounces at a solid grade of 4.3 grams per tonne gold with an additional reserve only limited by drilling density at the site.

Venus Metals has launched an RC drilling program at new targets at its wholly owned Youanmi lithium project in WA’s Murchison region, about 480km north-east of Perth. The drilling will test recently identified lithium anomalies in soil samples and rock chips for pegmatite-hosted lithium-caesium-tantalum mineralisation in the bedrock. The rock chips returned up to 2.11 per cent lithium oxide.

Regional air-core drilling on Horizon Minerals’ tenements 25km southeast of Kalgoorlie has returned multiple shallow clay-hosted rare earths and scandium anomalies. Results of up to 2437 parts per million total rare earth oxides were obtained with magnet rare earths up to 718ppm as scandium oxide results grading up to 445ppm formed a linear zone. Ongoing metallurgical testing will guide future work at the zone.

Auric Mining is pressing ahead with its ambition of a Jeffreys Find gold mine after commencing a grade control drill program at the project. The company plans a short mine life at Jeffreys Find, first with a starter pit and then a full pit. Grade control drilling is designed to give certainty by defining information on the ore grades and blocks.

Infinity Mining will launch a new survey technique at its Tambourah South lithium project in the Pilbara region of WA that uses real-time data processing to model a 3D map of the underlying geology of the site. The Ambient Noise Tomography survey technology allows the explorer to map in 3D down to several hundred metres where lithium, caesium and tantalum-rich pegmatites identified at surface have grown at depth.

Octava Minerals has identified a new lithium prospect on its Talga project in WA’s Pilbara region. The newly identified “Nimerry” prospect has pegmatites outcrops hosted within greenstones close to the granite greenstone contact. Pegmatites of various sizes have been sampled and sent for analysis with the results expected by the end of February. The largest being 30m wide and 60m long – located 3km from the company’s other lithium prospect Pinnacle Well.