Public Company News

ASX-listed manganese hopeful, Element 25, has hopped aboard the fast train to production, committing to the purchase of long-lead-time plant and equipment items for its proposed low CAPEX Butcherbird manganese project in the Pilbara. The company is on a rapid-fire project development schedule, which it says is advancing on time and budget.

Blackstone has charmed yet another nickel discovery out of the jungle in Vietnam, with geophysics lighting up the Viper Discovery Zone, just 200 metres east of the current exploration focus, the Ban Chang prospect. The company’s exploration and development program over the Ta Khoa nickel-copper project continues to gain pace with both a maiden resource and scoping study on the horizon.

Deep Yellow has teamed up with engineering heavy-weight Ausenco to oversee the latter half of the company’s Pre-Feasibility Study in Namibia. Ausenco will work closely with the company providing specialist process design, engineering, equipment lists and capital estimates as the company fast-tracks the development of its Tumas uranium deposits.

Aruma Resources has built on its already enviable ground position at its Saltwater gold project on the southern margin of WA’s emerging Pilbara goldfield. The company has added three new exploration licences to the project with its tenure now covering over 65km of highly prospective and under-explored stratigraphy. Exploration is expected to kick off in the coming weeks with drilling planned for later in 2020.

ASX-listed aspiring WA gold developer, Middle Island Resources, is on the verge of receiving government approvals for multiple exploration licences that collectively make up its big greenfields Barkly copper-gold play in the Northern Territory’s newly identified East Tennant mineral province. The NT Government has given the nod to the company’s applications for licences spanning a whopping 3,253sqkm and they can now be granted at Middle Island’s option.

Ardiden has cleared the way for drilling to commence at its 110,000-ounce Kasagiminnis gold deposit in Canada. The company has now received a permit to undertake exploration, completed its consultation with the first nation groups and engaged a drilling contractor to kick off its exploration program over the under-explored gold deposit during the current summer season.

If there are any major gold deposits left lurking within cooee of Kalgoorlie, Horizon Minerals will most likely find them after it announced this week it is about to launch a massive, 70,000m drill campaign on an axis around Kalgoorlie that will leave no stone unturned. It will cost $7 million and feed into Horizon’s much anticipated definitive feasibility study.

ASX-listed Lithium Australia’s proprietary processing technologies continue to demonstrate that metal dust from old lithium batteries, discarded low-grade spodumene and mine waste can be converted into lithium ferro phosphates for the manufacture of high-performance lithium-ion battery cathodes.

Terrain Minerals is off and running at its promising Smokebush gold project in WA. Drilling is now underway over the Monza and T13 prospects following up on a historical drill hits and high-grade sampling, including 2 metres at 11.3 g/t gold. Terrain farmed into the project in December 2019 and can earn an 80 per cent interest in the tenure by spending $250,000 over a two-year period.

Eclipse Metals is ready to launch into the second phase of diamond drilling at its high-grade Amamoor manganese project in Queensland. Initial exploration over the historic mining area has established that the ore system consists of multiple, steeply dipping high-grade lenses that remain untested by drilling and with demand for the battery metal looking set to sky-rocket the timing is good for Eclipse.

Wiluna Mining looks set to bank more than $110 million over the next 12 months after it secured a $21 million drawdown facility repayable in gold and hedged a further $90.9 million of gold at near record prices. The nine-figure windfall comes at an opportune time for the company as it begins the expansion of the Wiluna processing plant and gears up for an innovative transition into sulphide concentrate production.

ASX-listed base metals explorer Legend Mining has encountered more significant nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation at its exciting Mawson prospect at its Rockford project in WA’s Fraser Range district that looks to be shaping up as a possible extension to the original discovery.