Public Company News

Altech Chemicals is inching closer to production of high-purity alumina after completing Stage 1 of construction at its HPA plant in Malaysia, both on time and budget. The company is now progressing Stage 2, which includes the development of an on-site electrical substation for the processing facility. Altech will produce 4,500 tonnes a year of HPA sourced from pure kaolin clays in WA.

Adriatic Metals has raised $25m via a two-tranche institutional placement to expedite an aggressive exploration program through to a BFS at its exciting, Vareš multi-metals project in Bosnia. The company is also seeking a secondary listing of its shares on the London Stock Exchange during the current quarter to capture further interest from UK and European investors that are looking to support the world-class, high-grade project.

Hot Chili’s drilling at the Cuerpo 3 deposit within its Cortadera porphyry discovery in Chile has hit a 264m long, near-surface intercept of copper and gold mineralisation from just 52m down-hole, opening up the potential for future open-pit extraction. Another hole 250m to the southwest recorded a strongly mineralised porphyry system from surface to at least 313m depth, confirming the zone is also situated in shallow up-dip positions.

Tyranna Resources has picked up a couple of interesting nickel tenements in WA in addition to a NSW nickel-cobalt laterite play. The company will acquire unlisted, Clean Power Resources', prime nickel ground across two states. The WA projects are located in good nickel country with a total prospective strike length of over 30km across structures that link directly to St George Mining’s successful nickel play at Mt Alexander.

St George Mining has discovered seven new downhole electromagnetic conductors believed to be reflective of an extensive, high-grade sulphide mineralised system at depth. More massive sulphide mineralisation has also been observed during ongoing diamond drilling at Investigators East with assays pending. The new conductors and sulphide mineralisation are located at the company’s Mt Alexander Project west of Leonora in WA.

Horizon Minerals has kicked off a major grade control drilling program at its Boorara project that neighbours Kalgoorlie's Super Pit. A 2016 trial pit delivered a reconciled mill gold grade of 1.73g/t against an initial resource modelled grade of 1g/t. This demonstrates the importance of the appropriately named ‘grade control drilling’ program ahead of mining to optimise the mining operation and potentially boost the head grade.

The board of Azumah Resources’ has successfully held out for more money as Ibaera Capital’s increased takeover offer of 3.3 cents a share finally gets the nod from Directors. The new offer represents a 136% premium to the company’s closing price before the original offer was made in September and an 18% premium to the 2.8c per share offer made by Ibaera at that time.

Norwest Energy has upgraded the prospective gas resources at its Lockyer Deep and North Erregulla Deep prospects to 1,122 billion cubic feet, just 10km north of Strike Energy’s exceptional West Erregulla-2 gas discovery in the Perth Basin. The company holds a 20% stake in the associated gas permit with operator Energy Resources and the JV partners will shortly decide on the location of a well at the project.

Great Southern Mining is set to launch its maiden drill program at the historical Cox’s Find gold project near Laverton in WA. The historical mine produced some 76,000 ounces of gold at an absurdly high 22.6 grams per tonne for WMC, close to 80 years ago. The program forms the first substantial exploration in 25 years and the first drilling below 60m depth.

Cloud-based telecommunications pacesetter, Vonex, this week banked $630,000 in rebates from the Australian Government’s Research and Development Tax Incentive Program for eligible R&D activities conducted during the 2018-19 financial year. The company’s retail business is expanding rapidly, with 34,000 users registered for its core, cloud-based, PABX telephony business as the company muscles its way in amongst the majors, courtesy of the market disruption caused by the NBN.

Strike Energy has produced some outstanding initial flow test results from the Kingia Formation within its exciting West Erregulla-2 gas discovery well in the Perth Basin of WA. The numbers are consistent with other high rate gas wells in the region. Strike recently provided an update and strategy to begin unlocking value from the surrounding gas field, with a schedule developed to begin producing gas by early 2022 and fast-track cash flows.

Kingwest Resources is rapidly making its newly acquired Menzies gold project its own with ounce plus hits rolling off the drill bit. Thirty six grams per tonne gold over a metre intersection is a good start to what is shaping up to be an action-packed drill program across this exciting project that is littered with historic workings and old shafts.