Public Company News

In an extraordinary move amid the Coronavirus inspired market carnage, Blackstone Minerals has managed to place $6.8m at a 62% premium to market to giant South Korean battery materials manufacturer, EcoPro. EcoPro owns the world’s 2nd largest nickel-rich battery cathode manufacturer and the largest operation of its kind in Korea. EcoPro is looking to get exposure to Blackstone’s Ta Khoa Nickel-Platinum project in Vietnam.

Lithium Australia has received its certificate of grant from IP Australia guaranteeing up to 20 years of patent protection relating to its “LieNA” lithium processing technology. LieNA takes fine lithium spodumene ore and concentrates it by up to and greater than 85%. Traditional recovery methods are currently as low as 50%, with the rest going to waste, according to Lithium Australia.

Neometals has levered its vanadium metallurgical processing smarts to team up with unlisted Scandanavian energy metals player, Critical Metals Ltd to jointly evaluate the viability of building a ground-breaking vanadium recycling plant that will harvest vanadium from “slag”, or waste produced by global steel company, SSAB. SSAB has been stockpiling its vanadium rich steel waste product that Neometals says might be the highest grade vanadium feedstock in the world.

ASX-listed, smart home technology provider, Quantify Technology, has secured yet another sales contract through its east coast distributor, Harvey Norman Commercial, taking its “smart” light switches, power points and related hardware into a new, high-end residential development in Sydney. The three-year contract, worth in excess of $450,000, gives it exclusive rights to install its smart devices into thirty-six innovative, high quality apartments and townhouses being developed by Dilcara.

ASX-listed ‘software-as-a-service’ provider, K2fly, said this week that it expects to be cash flow-positive for the first time in the current quarter as the total contract value of its multi-year, mining client contracts hike by a spectacular 793% year on year. The rapidly growing tech company has seen its quarterly invoicing almost double, year-on-year whilst this year’s invoicing has already surpassed its total FY19 invoices.

Australian Potash is moving to the due diligence phase of its application for federal funding through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to support the DFS for its Lake Wells SOP fertilizer project near Laverton in WA. Whilst there are no guarantees, the company said the transition from the strategic assessment phase to due diligence was a positive step in its plans for funding support at Lake Wells.

Venus Metals and its JV partner Rox Resources have produced some exceptional gold grades from the Grace prospect at the Youanmi project near Mt Magnet WA including 7m grading 54.6g/t gold from just 8m downhole. The Grace prospect sits neatly between the old Youanmi pit and the mothballed mill and is shaping up as a standalone deposit in its own right. Other exceptional results tabled this week include 6m grading 5.7g/t from 24m.

Adriatic Metals has systems kept its foot on the gas at its remarkable poly-metallic Vareš project in Bosnia with the ASX listed company continuing to successfully manage the global coronavirus pandemic right across its operational areas and only experiencing minor delays as a result of some border closures. Adriatic has already drilled 2,800 metres this year of a planned 20,000m program between an impressive five drill rigs.

Terrain Minerals has offloaded its Great Western gold project near Leonora to ASX-listed Red5 under an option agreement that will see Terrain receive $2.2 million worth of Red5 scrip. The company has already pocketed $300k from Red5, who purchased the option for the Great Western project in November last year. Terrain will use the funds to launch exploration programs at its Wild viper and Smokebush projects.

Neometals has completed pilot plant testing on its potentially lithium-ion battery recycling technology with the work pointing to high recoveries of nickel, cobalt and other valuable battery materials such as lithium from spent and scrapped batteries. The company’s proprietary hydrometallurgical process can then turn the metals into a host of chemicals for re-use within the lithium supply chain. Commercial-scale feasibility studies and demonstration trials in Europe are next.

Lithium Australia will focus on ramping up revenues from its Envirostream battery recycling plant in Melbourne whilst implementing targeted austerity measures to preserve as much of its $3.3m cash balance as it can throughout the global COVID-19 crisis. The company also said it is expecting Soluna Australia to generate revenues from battery sales during the current quarter whilst exploration and technology development expenditures are deferred.

Impact Minerals has been awarded a $75,000 grant from the New South Wales Government in a nod to the company's technical accomplishments at its Broken Hill project. The windfall was awarded by the New Frontiers Cooperative Drilling grants programme and Impact will use the money to explore its NSW play for nickel-copper-platinum group metal deposits.