James Pearson

88 Energy has wrapped up a successful 2D seismic program across its petroleum exploration licence in Namibia’s Owambo Basin with initial analysis picking up significant subsurface structures. The company will soon begin crunching the processed data in collaboration with joint venture partner Monitor Exploration and look to produce an independent prospective resource estimate by April next year.

It feels like Groundhog Day after Strickland Metals served up yet another massive drill hit from its Serbian copper-gold Medenovac prospect within the company’s Rogozna project. The latest drill campaign has thrown up a significant 223m intersection grading 1.7g/t gold equivalent from 179m including 43m at 4.6 g/t gold equivalent from 357m. The mineralisation now strikes for 150m.

Meeka Metals' Murchison gold project, 50km north of Meekatharra, is ahead of schedule with its 136-man camp and haul road nearing completion, targeting a mid-2025 first gold pour. And with 88 of the 136 accommodation rooms now fully commissioned, Meeka has importantly, created the opportunity to save some valuable time by ensuring space for the expanding workforce on-site.

Led by a refreshed management team including the return of prodigal son and founder, managing director Jeromy Young, video technology innovator Atomos has posted a remarkable 72.5 per cent year on year improvement in gross profit margin. The company has also confirmed a six per cent lift in sales growth over the previous corresponding period driven by strong uptake of its revamped Ninja and Shinobi II core products.

An airborne survey flown by White Cliff Minerals has uncovered multiple big copper targets at its Hulk prospect, part of the company’s Rae copper project in Canada’s Nunavut Territory. The three conductors align with a recent rock chip assay picked up as part of a maiden survey, which came in at 1.65 per cent copper.

Aguia Resources has finally won a longstanding court battle, clearing the path to first production in 2025 at its Três Estradas phosphate project in southern Brazil. A lawsuit filed in 2021 by the Federal Public Prosecutors Office with the support of local ranchers sought to block a processing license that had been granted to the Aguia in 2019, following environmental approval.

Image Resources has locked in a US$20 million offtake pre-payment from Shantou Natfort Zirconium and Titanium Co, its key Chinese heavy minerals concentrate partner. The deal will provide funding to support the construction of the company’s 100%-owned Atlas mineral sands project, 170 kilometres north of Perth. Drawdown should occur in two tranches of US$10 million each in November and January.

Buxton Resources has nailed a record 124m drill hit at 16.6 per cent total graphitic carbon at its Graphite Bull project, 300km east of Carnarvon, WA. The hole, drilled as part of a 29-hole reverse circulation program, intersected the monster hit at a depth of just 44m and has extended the strike of Graphite Bull by an extra 240m outside the existing resource.

Strickland Metals has punched out more good hits at its Horse Well gold project near Wiluna in Western Australia. The latest assays have increased the strike length by 260m to more than 1.6km at the Marwari prospect while at the Bronco prospect, two new high-grade zones have been unearthed.

Larvotto Resources has kicked off a major diamond drilling program at its 100 per cent-owned Hillgrove gold-antimony project in New South Wales in a bid to expand the known mineral resource. The company is looking to target “near mine” areas and is hoping to follow up on a stella prior drill hit of 31m grading a whopping 65 g/t gold.

ASX-listed Radiopharm Theranostics has partnered with US-based BAMF Health for a phase 2b trial in the US to test its “F18-RAD 101 radiotracer”. The innovative treatment targets the fatty acid synthetase, which is a protein over-expressed in brain tumours but absent in healthy cells. It uses a molecule combined with the F18 isotope to enhance tumour detection and treatment precision.

A magnetic survey by Carnaby Resources has found a major conductor at the San Quentin prospect beneath outcrops of up to 6.7 per cent copper at its Greater Duchess JV with Latitude 66 in Queensland. The prospect is near the 4.2 million tonne Nil Desperandum deposit and and boast some 800m of outcropping copper mineralisation that is yet to be drilled.

Red Metal Ltd says its giant 4.8 billion-tonne rare earths deposit at its Sybella project near Mt Isa in QLD is a globally significant discovery. In revealing its maiden inferred mineral resource estimate, the company also pointed to a shallow section of the deposit at surface that is weathered granite and therefore potentially amenable to low-cost heap-leach processing.

Image Resources has targeted a mid-2025 start to heavy mineral concentrate production at its Atlas project, 170km north of Perth, after securing essential water licences to accelerate construction. The milestone has now offered a clear timeline for renewed cash flows - expected to be $62m pre-tax over two years - almost two years after shutting down the successful Boonanarring project, located 100km south of Atlas.

In a stunning business turnaround, Ora Banda Mining has set a quarterly production record, delivering 24,327 ounces of gold at a grade of 3.4 grams per tonne from its Davyhurst project in Western Australia’s renowned Goldfields region. The company’s cash reserves jumped 81 per cent to $48.7 million, while its share price surged 15 per cent to a 77c high today on strong trading volume.

Latitude 66 says it has unearthed high-grade gold and copper mineralisation at its Visna and Petaja prospects in northern Finland and has also worked up multiple new exploration targets before wrapping up a successful summer fieldwork program at its Peräpohja Schist Belt (PSB) project. The company is now planning further mapping at Visna before the exploration season closes down for winter.

Estrella Resources has jagged what the company says is its biggest-ever manganese outcrop in Timor-Leste – a massive supergene zone discovered 500m south of its Samalari prospect during ongoing mapping efforts. The recent find is particularly important due to the sheer scale of the manganese-iron oxides-rich outcrop that has been traced across a 1.7km strike and ranges between 2m and 6m in width.

ASX-listed Radiopharm Theranostics has joined forces with a renowned global radiopharmaceutical manufacturer to produce its cancer-fighting treatment that targets commonly over-expressed protein in human tumours. The company’s agreement with Canadian-based AtomVie Global Radiopharma has been cemented via Radiopharm Ventures – a joint venture it shares with the highly-regarded MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Texas in the United States.

With the antimony market booming and setting the share market alight, Bulls N' Bears has gone looking for the next critical metal shouting out for attention from new technologies – and it could be tungsten. Driven by demand in the industrial, renewables and defence sectors – and a shrinking supply – the alloy-hardening metal could soon join the chorus of critical minerals that are making all the noise.

Aurum Resources is on the cusp of becoming a bigger shark in the West African gold pond after circling fellow ASX-listed Mako Gold with an all-scrip bid at a whopping 112 per cent above the market price. Mako’s share price surged nearly 80 per cent on the back of the news that would create a major African gold explorer with cash reserves of AU$20 million.

Legend Mining is priming the drill bit for the Magnus prospect within at its Rockford project in WA after picking up four highly-conductive plates using its advanced high-powered fixed-loop electromagnetic survey. The most significant plate, with conductance measuring up to 5000 siemens, sits at the edge of a gravity anomaly and 550m below the deepest drilling to date, hinting at an undetected, but mineral-rich target.

Carnaby Resources has identified its undrilled San Quentin prospect as a new copper target, with rock-chip grades going up to 6.7 per cent at the Greater Duchess project it shares with Latitude 66 in Queensland. Sitting 2km to the south-east of the JV’s Nil Desperandum copper discovery near Mount Isa, management says San Quentin is showing 800m of outcropping mineralisation.

On a massive turnover of more than 105 million shares, White Cliff Minerals' stock surged more than eight per cent today after the company revealed multiple copper rock-chip samples grading more than 50 per cent from its Rae project in Canada’s Nunavut territory. The maiden field program confirmed large-scale, high-grade copper occurrences at both the company’s Rocket and Thor prospects.

Global metals-trading giant Glencore has cast its eye across Estrella Resources’ manganese ground in Timor-Leste, where the latter has unveiled high-grade rock-chip assays hitting up to 57 per cent manganese at its Sica and Lalena prospects in the nation’s Lautém Municipality. The results, which highlight the high-grade nature of manganese mineralisation in the largely untapped region, have marked a major step forward for Estrella’s exploration.

A $7 million American West Metals fundraising campaign, which has attracted new investors and the company’s directors, has helped build a war chest to boost exploration efforts and upgrade the resource estimate of its Storm copper project in Canada. Under the placement, 77.8 million new shares have been issued by the company at a price of 9c per share.

Suvo Strategic Minerals has turned nickel slag, the highly-polluting waste product of nickel pig iron production, into a high-strength, low-cost and low-carbon cement. Confirming positive laboratory testing that could revolutionise the centuries-old cement industry, the company says its recent trials in collaboration with Makassar State University in Indonesia achieved a compressive strength of 37.5 megapascals (MPa) after just seven days.

Fresh from delivering a feasibility study on its massive Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi, Lindian Resources has completed a successful North American roadshow to promote the project’s economic credentials and explore finance options. The company says it has fielded strong interest in helping it fund the first two stages of the operation and is in the process of reviewing potential partners.

Strickland Metals has landed a massive 545.7m drill hit grading 1.1 grams per tonne gold equivalent to create a northern resource extension of the Shanac deposit within its Rogozna gold and base metals project in Serbia. The intersection came from one of three recently-finished holes at site. Starting at 108m, it also included higher-grade sections of 102m at 1.7g/t and 30m at 2.4g/t.

Horizon Minerals has secured the green light to start gold mining at Phillips Find in WA, less than a week after mining the first ore from its Boorara mine that also sits in the State’s Goldfields region.

Larvotto Resources is set to fast-track the development of its Hillgrove gold-antimony mine in NSW after appointing a manager to crunch the numbers for a definitive feasibility study by early next year, in a bid to start production in late 2025. MACA Interquip Mintrex will look after the metallurgical testing and necessary plant design modifications to optimise the 500,000 tonnes per annum processing plant.

Thunderbird Resources has revealed recordings of elevated radioactivity levels up to 597 counts per second using a downhole gamma probe in a maiden drilling campaign at its 100 per cent-owned Hidden Bay uranium project in Canada’s Athabasca Basin. The recordings came in the fifth and final drillhole of the program that bore through 1781m in the renowned region.

Radiopharm Theranostics has moved closer to securing investigational new drug approval for a cancer-fighting radio-antibody after manufacturing the first batch of its “BetaBart” radiotherapeutic agent.