Public Company News

Aguia Resources has endured a forgettable few years, but with new management and a new plan in place for its South American projects, a road to riches may well lie just ahead. The company is aiming to deliver strong early cashflow from its high-grade Santa Barbara gold mine in Columbia to provide the cash needed to fire up its organic phosphate operations in Southern Brazil.

Ardea Resources has kicked off definitive feasibility study drilling planned to stretch for 51,745m in 888 holes at the Goongarrie Hub nickel project that it now shares with a giant Japanese consortium in the Western Australian Goldfields town of Kalgoorlie. The aim is to upgrade the project’s massive nickel-cobalt resource to the coveted measured mineral category to boost the confidence in its initial five-year plan.

Buxton Resources is employing a high-tech magnetic survey in a bid to define potential targets for the company’s maiden drill program at its recently-acquired Matrix manganese play in Arizona’s Mohave county. The survey will be flown at 30m flight lines above the 12-square-kilometre ground that sits on the interpreted western extension of Artillery Peak’s 277 million-tonne manganese resource grading at 2.8 per cent.

Strickland Metals has upped the ante at its Rogozna gold and base metals project in Serbia by adding a fourth diamond rig to target substantial copper-gold porphyry mineralisation at the site, with initial assays due next month. The new drilling activities come hot on the heels of Strickland confirming yesterday that it had completed its full acquisition of the project.

Aguia Resources is on the cusp of securing a processing facility close to its Tres Estrades phosphate project in Brazil that would cut its capital expenditure by 75 per cent and lead to an earlier production ramp up by mid-2025. The identification of existing processing plants within an economic trucking distance of Aguia's orebodies presents a unique opportunity to cut costs and accelerate production timelines.

Aruma Resources has wasted little time in firming up confidence at its new Bortala project in the Mount Isa Copper Belt after an initial appraisal at the site confirmed some promising copper-gold targets. The acquisition revealed only in late May was part of what management described as potentially “company-changing” gains of two copper operations in Queensland and a highly-prospective IOCG and uranium play in SA.

Ora Banda Mining has beefed up the mineral resources and ore reserves at its Davyhurst gold project in WA, attributing the growth to its underground exploration success and the definition of a new gold lode. The company not only managed to increase its underground ore reserve by 94 per cent, but also sweetened up the gold reserve grade by an extra 17 per cent.

In this week’s edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some of the notable drill intersections revealed on the ASX, including Chilwa Minerals’ drilling in Malawi that threw up an intriguing intercept of 13m at 10.5 per cent total heavy minerals. We also take a close look at other interesting drill hits from last week reported by Magnetic Resources and West African Resources.

Aurumin has unveiled a new suite of positive gold hits from four of its seven new targets at the company’s 881,000-ounce Sandstone gold project in Western Australia following a first-pass reverse-circulation drilling campaign. With more imminent drilling to come, the latest finds build on results in May that included a bonanza 1m intersection of 344g/t from the company’s Plum Pudding target.