Public Company News

Just 18 months after start up at its Boonanarring mine north of Perth, ASX-listed mineral sands miner, Image Resources, continues to hit its milestones with a third scheduled debt repayment of US$7.7m now bowled over. Image has been delivering strong production numbers that routinely exceed the plant’s design specifications and it has systematically defined multiple new ore horizons around the mine.

Lindian Resources’ has thrown up some pulse quickening, ultra-high-grade alumina numbers at both the Bouba north and Bouba south extensions of the Bouba plateau at its Gaoual conglomerate bauxite project in Guinea, Africa. Three holes from Bouba North returned alumina grades between 50 and 54.4 per cent alumina with four holes at Bouba South grading even higher, between 54.9 and 58.5 per cent alumina.

PolarX has its elephant gun firmly trained on the elephant sized mineral deposits in Alaska with the ASX listed company getting set to undertake follow up drilling of its extraordinary 55m long drill hit that showed 2.8 grams per tonne gold and 0.6% copper. Whilst the Zackly Main Skarn is already showing 213,000 ounces of gold, the real prize appears to be at Zackly East.

Element 25 has delivered an outstanding pre-feasibility study for its Butcherbird manganese project in the Pilbara, revealing that the operation will produce a pre-tax NPV in real terms AUD$283M at an incredible IRR of 223 per cent on project capital costs totaling AUD$14.5M. The project shows an initial mine life of 42 years and annual free cash flows of AUD$24M.

Unlisted private equity backed Barton Gold has received an all-important nod of approval from a South Australian Government authority tasked with approving or rejecting non-military use of its minerals rich military land in South Australia. Barton said this week it had secured Resource Exploration and Production Permits from the Woomera Prohibited Area Coordination Office known as “WPACO”.

Coziron Resources now has a diamond rig operating at its Top Camp prospect in the Pilbara, undertaking a second phase of drilling designed to follow up some exciting previous drill numbers such as 8 metres grading 10.2 grams per tonne gold from 135m down hole. The company said it will drill around three holes to about 200m depth across the 1.5km long, 400m wide prospect.

Despite the current Coronavirus inspired market challenges, ASX-listed Hot Chili has encountered no difficulty in completing a $5m placement to sophisticated and institutional investors to progress its burgeoning Cortadera copper-gold discovery in Chile. Existing shareholders will also get a piece of the action with an additional $3.9m expected to come in from a non-renounceable rights issue.

TSX-listed Novo Resources has uncovered a third, broad, shallow, alluvial gold-bearing channel at its Paradise project in the Pilbara after returning to the field recently. Novo also said assays of alluvial gravels from its nearby Egina mining lease returned a solid 0.84 grams gold per cubic metre from bulk samples that are proving better than traditional drilling in sizing up its conglomerate gold opportunity.

Ora Banda Mining has landed on a final resource estimate of 30,000 ounces of contained gold in the open pit section of its Callion gold deposit in WA’s Goldfields, up 114 per cent on previous estimates and now with a higher grade of 3.5g/t. The company is now working on a design to take the existing open hit from 40m down to a depth of 85m.

ASX-listed Legend Mining continues to fatten up its emerging, massive nickel-copper sulphide discovery at Mawson in Western Australia’s Fraser Range. Assay results tabled last week from diamond drilling returned two intercepts in one hole showing a total of 36.6m of mineralisation with grades increasing significantly at depth. Assay results just in from another hole bring the total mineralisation in that hole to 107.9m.

Buru Energy has received $1.2m in cash for its share of the latest sale of crude oil from its Ungani oil field in Western Australia’s Canning basin. This is the third oil sale for the year and rounds out a solid first half for Buru that was already sitting on a cash pot of $30 million at the end of the March quarter.

Blackstone Minerals’ King Cobra nickel discovery at its Ta Khoa nickel-PGM project in Vietnam looks to have plenty of bite left in it yet after the Perth based ASX-listed company nailed a near 38m intersection going 1.12 per cent nickel right from the surface. Whilst the platinum group element results are still to come, the nickel results are looking lucrative.