Craig Nolan

ra Banda Mining has further bolstered its bank balance after pocketing $11.71 million as its lucrative joint venture deal with business goliath Wesfarmers at the Davyhurst project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region nears completion. Ora Banda will now receive a final $4.29 million next week to complete the Davyhurst transaction after all conditions of the deal were satisfied.

Empire Energy Group says it has received binding commitments to raise a hulking $46.8 million from new and existing institutional shareholders, including two United States-based oil and gas heavyweights. The company will be extremely well-funded after the raise and will use its new “cash stash” to drill a 3km-long development well at its Carpentaria pilot project in the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Sub-basin.

Thunderbird Resources has assembled a surprising array of interesting-looking uranium and lithium targets in some of the hottest mineral territories in the world, including Canada’s Athabasca uranium basin. The Athabasca basin is remarkable for its average uranium grades of about 2 per cent and its massive-scale deposits – and Thunderbird appears to have picked the eyes out of it.

Bulls N’ Bears takes a look at the listed companies that have enjoyed share price explosions on the back of 16-year high uranium prices. With lithium taking a breather, the uranium renaissance has filled a gap as demand for uranium to power a clean-energy future pushed the commodity’s fortunes and propelled it to US$106 per pound earlier this year.

Si6 Metals has secured a second license at its JV Caldera rare earths project in the mining region of Minas Gerais in Brazil and will charge a drill-rig into the area to kick-off its latest program. The newly granted land borders that of Meteoric Resources exciting Caldeira rare earths project, where high-grade ionic-clay rare earths have been discovered at grades that are generally considered to be amongst the best in the clay based rare earths sector.

Allup Silica’s shares soared by more than 300 per cent today after confirmation that silica sands from the company’s Sparkler project near Albany in WA will be suitable for the solar panel industry and high-tech manufacturing. Allup also tabled some stellar results from its Cabbage Spot project near Wyndham showing grades up to 99.4 percent silica. Its stock touched 13c from its close yesterday of 2.9c.

ABx Group’s latest assay results have further expanded the rare earths zone at its Deep Leads-Rubble Mound project in northern Tasmania, showing mineralisation enriched in the valuable heavy rare earths, dysprosium and terbium. The company says the results prove the site west of Launceston retains the highest proportion of the two elements of any clay-hosted rare earths resource in Australia.

ChemX Materials has pulled in $1.1m from sophisticated investors to help fund the completion of its High purity alumina pilot plant in Perth. The company will also look to raise another $500k from shareholders in an SPP and ChemX directors will kick $65,000 into the raise. The company’s HPA pilot plant is already 80 per cent complete.

Altech Batteries has revealed a compelling set of numbers for its planned Cerenergy battery project in Germany, with its DFS forecasting a NPV of €169 million and annual revenue of €106 million generating EBITDA earnings of a juicy €51million per annum. The company says capital cost estimates of €156 million and a steady-state payback period of 3.7 years add to the project’s appeal.