Public Company News

Antimony is the latest critical metal to send the hearts of ASX punters aflutter, but with new "must-have" metals constantly emerging, investors may be feeling just a little confused by the ever-changing landscape. Bulls N’ Bears takes a look into the rise and rise of the metal also sometimes referred to as stibnite and the companies jumping on the increasingly raucous bandwagon.

GreenTech Metals has intersected thick copper-zinc zones below six shoots during a new 1743m drilling program, indicating significant resource expansion potential at its Whundo project in WA’s Pilbara region. The campaign was designed to drill-test underexplored mineralisation along a 2.1km-long string of targets at Whundo and was followed up by DHEM surveys on selected holes in a bid to identify new copper-zinc mineralised zones.

Javelin Minerals’ reinterpretation of data from its Coogee project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region has thrown up a tantalising exploration theory that it is now primed to test with the drill bit. The company plans to determine if a magnetic anomaly lurking just 300m from an old open pit at the site is a potential repetition of the historic lode.

Aurum Resources has scored extensive gold grabs reading up to 11.46m at 6.67g/t in four diamond drillholes during a second campaign at the BM Target 1 within its Boundiali gold project in Côte d'Ivoire. The program entailed five diamond drillholes for 914.5m and delivered a crop of broad, shallow medium to high-grade gold hits, with responses indicating mineralisation remains open along strike and down-dip.

88 Energy has today reported a significant increase in the oil and gas resources in two of the six key reservoirs at its Phoenix project in northern Alaska following an independent assessment of the operation. The company says respected energy consultant ERCE Australia has verified the 50 per cent resource jump to 378 million equivalent barrels of oil at the project.

Surefire Resources is following up newly-found base metals soil anomalism at its Yidby East gold project in WA’s Mid West region, with renewed exploration set to test for possible Golden Grove-style deposit analogues. The broad-scale anomalous copper-zinc was identified at the company’s Phat Boy target, about 50km from 29Metals’ renowned Golden Grove copper-lead-zinc-gold-silver operation and other nearby volcanogenic-hosted massive sulphide deposits in the same belt.

Metallurgical testwork at Xanadu Mines’ Kharmagtai copper-gold project in Mongolia has highlighted impressive recovery levels of 80 per cent from sulphide feed and a high-grade concentrate with low impurities. The potentially-saleable concentrate shows grades of up to 25 per cent copper and 25 grams per tonne gold from the porphyry deposits at the company’s South Gobi site in the landlocked East Asian country.

The ASX share price of Octava Minerals surged almost 200 per cent today after the company revealed high-grade antimony hits from historic drilling at its Yallalong project, 220km north of Geraldton in Western Australia. The finds include an impressive 3m at 6.83 per cent antimony and 7m at 3.27 per cent at a time when the silvery metal is all the range on global markets.

In this week’s edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some notable drill intersections revealed on the ASX, including Solstice Minerals’ solid gold reveal after air-core drilling in WA. We also take a look at drill hits from last week as reported by Peel Mining from its Cobar South projects in NSW, Sun Silver in Nevada and Cauldron Energy in WA’s North West.

Thunderbird Resources is homing in on evidence of uranium mineralisation after drilling significant hydrothermal alteration and detecting radioactivity at its Hidden Bay project in Canada’s prolific Athabasca Basin. The maiden four-hole drilling campaign was designed primarily to test possible basement-hosted uranium targets close to the Athabasca Basin unconformity and the company now believes it may be close to unveiling a uranium mineralising system.

The European Union has delivered ASX-listed Neometals a crucial endorsement for its vanadium recovery project in Finland, co-funding part of the company’s bid to become Europe’s first vanadium producer. The funding deal for the project that refines waste from steelmaking into the valuable vanadium battery metal was executed with Germany’s EU-backed EIT RawMaterials and could be worth up to some AU$42.3 million.

Lycaon Resources' share price has surged 31 per cent to 31.5c on significant trading volume after it secured the crucial heritage clearance that will enable a maiden drilling campaign at its Stansmore niobium-rare earths project in Western Australia’s West Arunta region. The company will use a $180,000 exploration incentive scheme grant from the WA Government to fund the program.