Matt Birney

Impact Minerals has picked up an interesting suite of five tenements that it believes are prospective for nickel-copper-PGM in the south-west of WA’s Yilgarn Craton. The tenements will be known as the Arkun project. The Yilgarn craton is revered for its gold, nickel and copper deposits. However, more recently, interest has turned to the rare suite of platinum group elements in the area.

Blackstone Minerals is once again headed into the jungle surrounding its Ta Khoa nickel-copper-PGE project in Vietnam. It has kicked off an aggressive program of geophysics and drilling to hunt down more high-grade repetitions of its impressive Ban Phuc nickel mine. The company continues to produce a wealth of sulphide targets and high-grade nickel results that should boost its scoping study.

InteliCare’s in-home monitoring technology for the sick and the elderly made a spectacular debut on the ASX this week with the company’s shares running hard from 20c to a crescendo of 58c for the week. Lead Manager, JP Equity closed the book early after getting a flood of bids totalling $6.2m against the targeted $5.5m, which caused scale backs and a flurry of on market buying.

Element 25 has completed a deal that will see it sell a portfolio of royalties it was holding over multiple projects for around A$500,000 worth of shares in TSX-listed specialist royalty company, Vox Royalty Corp. Element 25’s stock doubled recently from 20c to 40c after the market consumed its PFS and unlike many other flash in the pan ASX-listed company share price runs – it stayed there.

Great Southern Mining has racked up another successful exploration program at its Edinburgh Park Project in north Queensland, with a recently acquired hyperspectral dataset lighting up a litany of interpreted geochemical footprints of mineralised porphyry, epithermal gold-silver and intrusive related copper-gold and multi-metals systems.

ASX-listed Lithium Australia has formed an alliance with neighbour and fellow ASX-listed explorer, Australian Vanadium and privateer, Mercator Metals to explore for nickel-copper-PGE across contiguous tenements in the hills east of Perth. Lithium Australia said the alliance will target look-alikes to ASX-listed Chalice Gold Mines’ nearby Julimar project where a significant nickel-copper-PGE discovery was made just 29km to the northwest.

Calidus Resources has entered into a Heads of Agreement to earn up to 70 per cent of the prospective looking Otways Project, located just 50km from its flagship Warrawoona gold project in the Pilbara. The initial part of the deal with ASX-listed Rugby Mining Limited, will see Calidus spend $200K on the Otways project and put 1,200m of RC drilling into it over 12 months.

Canadian-focussed Ardiden Limited is all set to kick off a diamond drilling program at the Kasagiminnis deposit where recent work adds significant weight to the prospectivity of its Pickle Lake project. The Kasagiminnis deposit contains a maiden resource of 110,000 ounces grading 4.3 grams per tonne gold and the company has set an exploration target of between 500,000 and 1.2m ounces.

On the back of a recent find at its Paradise alluvial gold prospect in the Pilbara, TSX-listed conglomerate gold pioneer, Novo Resources, has uncovered a new, fresh, shallow, alluvial gold-bearing channel at its Egina project in WA’s northwest. Novo said the new channel that ties in well with its gold-bearing gravel terrace geological model has a width of 350m and a gravel thickness of 0.5-2.0m.

ASX-listed Venus Metals has entered into an option agreement with local prospectors to acquire a 90 per cent interest in an interesting looking base metals and gold land package. The agreement covers seven exploration license applications over an area of 1,366 square kilometres across the Narndee-Windimurra layered intrusive complex, just 15km west of the Youanmi igneous complex that hosts Venus’ Youanmi gold interests.

Neometals has lifted the nickel resource at its Mt Edwards nickel project in WA yet again after expanding the resource at its Gillett deposit by a sizeable 30 per cent. Gillett now stands at 22,500 tonnes of contained nickel that sits between 80m and 350m below surface. Gillett is one of eleven ‘short lead time’ deposits that Neometals is building.

Legend Mining believes it is closing in on the ‘big one’ at Mawson’s with drilling intersecting 30 metres of massive sulphides. The drill hole was designed to test a strong, ‘off-hole’ geophysical conductor and returned three zones of strong massive sulphide mineralisation. The drill core samples are now headed for the lab with an estimated three-week turnaround for results.

Ora Banda Mining continues to exceed market expectations with ore reserves at its Davyhurst gold project leaping an impressive 60 per cent. This latest update puts 330,000 ounces of gold into Ora Banda’s mine inventory and underpins the company’s DFS. Pit design and financial modelling are nearing completion while mine scheduling is well advanced and due to be delivered in June 2020.

ASX-listed Coziron Resources has promoted its technical guru and Director, Dr Rob Ramsay to the role of Managing Director and CEO as the company seeks to add value to its exciting Top Camp gold prospect in the Pilbara. Coziron’s board said Ramsay has been with Coziron for 12 years and played a central role in the discovery of high-grade gold mineralisation at Top Camp.

Altech Chemicals’ research in Germany on high purity alumina used in lithium-ion batteries shows that only the pinnacle quality of HPA is safe and efficient. The research underscores Altech’s high quality “4N” HPA product and makes stark comparison to lower quality products sometimes used that were shown to leach sodium from the batteries and cause discharge problems.

88 Energy has received an endorsement from the directors of ASX-listed XCD Energy in the latter’s target statement responding to 88 Energy’s formal takeover offer announced on April 24th. The XCD board has unanimously endorsed 88 Energy’s offer of 2.4 88 Energy shares for each XCD share held and 0.7 88 Energy shares for each XCD listed option.

Blackham Resources' expansion strategy at its Wiluna Mining Centre is looking the goods with its latest drill campaign throwing up some exceptional grades from shallow depths. Best numbers include 14.45 metres at 17.16 g/t gold and 6 metres at 53.73 g/t gold that included a 1m intersection going an impressive 9 ounces to the tonne gold.

Kairos Minerals has locked away a $4.2 million capital raise corner-stoned by billionaire gold bull and fund manager Eric Sprott. Kairos is hoping to emulate the stunning success of neighbour, De Grey Mining and join the prestigious ‘million-ounce club’ in the coming months with the money. An extensive fieldwork campaign will kick off in early June, with drilling in July.

ASX-listed Proteomics International has received a $200,000 boost in funding courtesy of the WA Health Department and the WA Health Translation Network to develop a rapid test for COVID-19 and undertake some ground breaking research into why it attacks some worse than others. Proteomics will make use of its state-of-the-art facilities at the QE11 Medical centre.

After a successful round of greenhouse tests, Lithium Australia is set to undertake field trials for its spent alkaline battery waste fertiliser product near Kojonup in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt. It is aiming to deliver recycled manganese and zinc as micro-nutrient supplements to WA’s broad acre pastoralists in a region that produces around 14 million tonnes of grain annually.

Tyranna Resources says it is not currently in a position to consider Marmota Limited’s bid for its Jumbuck gold project in South Australia’s gold-rich Gawler Craton after taking legal advice that will see it first deal with an earlier offer from ASX-listed Syngas that has been slow to settle. Whilst the Marmota bid appears to have fewer conditions, Tyranna said it was compelled by binding exclusivity obligations to first deal with the Syngas offer.

ASX-listed Adriatic Metals can now move on to the urban planning permit phase of the approvals process for its Veovaca precious and base metals deposit after Bosnia’s Federal Government signed off on the environmental permit, removing a key hurdle on the pathway to production. The permit covers the Veovaca mine, plant and tailings facility.

ASX-listed Hammer Metals has picked up $150,000 from the West Australian Government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme to test a compelling gravity and structural target at its Bronzewing South Gold project, located 50kms northeast of Leinster. The grant will partly fund the drilling of the deeper gravity targets around Bronzewing south, whilst drilling is also set to resume at the shallow North Orelia Target.

Amongst the debris of ASX-listed companies that have been laid to waste by the ravages of the Coronavirus, one curious company has managed to get a listing away. Aged care in-home monitoring firm, InteliCare, will debut on the ASX today after its lead manager, JP Equity, closed its book early when it was overrun by investors looking to get a piece of the $5.5m IPO.

Middle Island Resources has been on a roll at its Sandstone project in Western Australia, having smashed out over 13 kilometres of phase one RC drilling across some 14 different prospects that has identified four new deposits in the process. All of the phase one drilling was completed within a 4km radius of the company’s processing plant and importantly, most of the targets already sit on mining leases.

Private equity backed Barton Gold has laid its cards on the table and signalled its intention to list the ex-WPG Resources mining assets in South Australia on the ASX by appointing a top tier legal firm to handle its IPO. Barton is developing a plan to restart the mothballed Tarcoola project as early as the second half of 2021.

After a successful year of vectoring in on the source of its significant nickel hits at Mt Alexander in WA, St George Mining will now kick off a major drill program. The latest round of drilling comes hot on the heels of the company’s oversubscribed $3.6 million placement, highlighting St Georges commitment to fast-tracking the project .

TNT Mines has just picked up a swathe of new uranium-vanadium mineral claims in the US and the market has been all over it with TNT’s stock jumping more than fivefold in the last two weeks, reaching highs of 22c from a low of 4c. The market meerkats are on high alert right now for anything that has a whiff of uranium.

Automotive conglomerate, AMA Group, has locked in its first fleet customer in SG Fleet who manages a 140,000 strong fleet of vehicles. The deal with the fleet management, vehicle leasing and salary packaging firm should add 4000 new repair jobs a year to AMA’s network of panel and mechanical repair workshops across Australia and New Zealand.

ASX-listed oil explorer, 88 Energy, has identified a second oil appraisal location close to the historical “Heavenly-1” test well at its Icewine project in Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope after integrating the results of its recently drilled, “Charlie-1” gas and condensate discovery well. 88 Energy believes the new appraisal location now has a better chance of finding oil in the target Seabee formation.

Norwest Energy, along with JV partner and Operator, Mineral Resources, is collaborating with other Perth Basin operators to secure a drilling rig for a multi-well program commencing in the third quarter of this year. Norwest and Mineral Resources are looking to join the consortium to secure a rig on beneficial terms to drill their highly anticipated Lockyer Deep-1 exploration well.

Perth’s Infinity Lithium has managed to muscle its way into the EU lithium market and was part of a heavyweight team this week that presented to the Vice Presidents of the European Commission and the European Investment Bank. With the EU now on a mission to become self-sustainable in lithium, Infinity’s San Jose lithium project is looking good.