Matt Birney

ASX-listed explorer, St George Mining has shone a light on some 35 kilometres of prospective geology in the revered Paterson province in the eastern Pilbara of WA after a new aeromagnetic survey lit up several potential copper and gold exploration hotspots. The geophysical survey represents the company’s inaugural field work program in this prolific mineral province and it has now applied for co-funding under the WA Government’s Exploration Incentive Scheme.

Ora Banda Mining has updated the mineral resource estimate for its historic Golden Eagle mine, located just 3.2km from its Davyhurst processing plant, in WA’s Eastern Goldfields, with an initial underground resource of 49,000 ounces of gold. The upgrade totals 393 kt at a higher grade of 3.9 g/t gold at a cut-off grade of 2.0 g/t to reflect the potential to mine this deposit by conventional underground mining.

Local heavy rare earths producer, Northern Minerals has upgraded the mineral resource estimate for its Dazzler deposit in north-eastern WA by 50 per cent to 214,000 tonnes and delivered a small uplift in grade to 2.33 per cent total rare earth oxides. The company said Dazzler is now the second largest deposit at its Browns Range heavy rare earths project, behind the Wolverine resource.

Venus Metals continues to zero in on the Penny South prospect at its Youanmi gold project. The company’s latest geophysical program has highlighted five priority EM targets at the high-profile project which is located immediately along strike from Spectrum Metals famed Penny West gold deposit. The company is now planning a follow up program with detailed ground EM and deep RC drilling planned for the coming months.

In an extraordinary move amid the Coronavirus inspired market carnage, Blackstone Minerals has managed to place $6.8m at a 62% premium to market to giant South Korean battery materials manufacturer, EcoPro. EcoPro owns the world’s 2nd largest nickel-rich battery cathode manufacturer and the largest operation of its kind in Korea. EcoPro is looking to get exposure to Blackstone’s Ta Khoa Nickel-Platinum project in Vietnam.

Lithium Australia has received its certificate of grant from IP Australia guaranteeing up to 20 years of patent protection relating to its “LieNA” lithium processing technology. LieNA takes fine lithium spodumene ore and concentrates it by up to and greater than 85%. Traditional recovery methods are currently as low as 50%, with the rest going to waste, according to Lithium Australia.

Neometals has levered its vanadium metallurgical processing smarts to team up with unlisted Scandanavian energy metals player, Critical Metals Ltd to jointly evaluate the viability of building a ground-breaking vanadium recycling plant that will harvest vanadium from “slag”, or waste produced by global steel company, SSAB. SSAB has been stockpiling its vanadium rich steel waste product that Neometals says might be the highest grade vanadium feedstock in the world.

ASX-listed, smart home technology provider, Quantify Technology, has secured yet another sales contract through its east coast distributor, Harvey Norman Commercial, taking its “smart” light switches, power points and related hardware into a new, high-end residential development in Sydney. The three-year contract, worth in excess of $450,000, gives it exclusive rights to install its smart devices into thirty-six innovative, high quality apartments and townhouses being developed by Dilcara.

ASX-listed ‘software-as-a-service’ provider, K2fly, said this week that it expects to be cash flow-positive for the first time in the current quarter as the total contract value of its multi-year, mining client contracts hike by a spectacular 793% year on year. The rapidly growing tech company has seen its quarterly invoicing almost double, year-on-year whilst this year’s invoicing has already surpassed its total FY19 invoices.

Australian Potash is moving to the due diligence phase of its application for federal funding through the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility to support the DFS for its Lake Wells SOP fertilizer project near Laverton in WA. Whilst there are no guarantees, the company said the transition from the strategic assessment phase to due diligence was a positive step in its plans for funding support at Lake Wells.

Venus Metals and its JV partner Rox Resources have produced some exceptional gold grades from the Grace prospect at the Youanmi project near Mt Magnet WA including 7m grading 54.6g/t gold from just 8m downhole. The Grace prospect sits neatly between the old Youanmi pit and the mothballed mill and is shaping up as a standalone deposit in its own right. Other exceptional results tabled this week include 6m grading 5.7g/t from 24m.

Adriatic Metals has systems kept its foot on the gas at its remarkable poly-metallic Vareš project in Bosnia with the ASX listed company continuing to successfully manage the global coronavirus pandemic right across its operational areas and only experiencing minor delays as a result of some border closures. Adriatic has already drilled 2,800 metres this year of a planned 20,000m program between an impressive five drill rigs.

Terrain Minerals has offloaded its Great Western gold project near Leonora to ASX-listed Red5 under an option agreement that will see Terrain receive $2.2 million worth of Red5 scrip. The company has already pocketed $300k from Red5, who purchased the option for the Great Western project in November last year. Terrain will use the funds to launch exploration programs at its Wild viper and Smokebush projects.

Neometals has completed pilot plant testing on its potentially lithium-ion battery recycling technology with the work pointing to high recoveries of nickel, cobalt and other valuable battery materials such as lithium from spent and scrapped batteries. The company’s proprietary hydrometallurgical process can then turn the metals into a host of chemicals for re-use within the lithium supply chain. Commercial-scale feasibility studies and demonstration trials in Europe are next.

Lithium Australia will focus on ramping up revenues from its Envirostream battery recycling plant in Melbourne whilst implementing targeted austerity measures to preserve as much of its $3.3m cash balance as it can throughout the global COVID-19 crisis. The company also said it is expecting Soluna Australia to generate revenues from battery sales during the current quarter whilst exploration and technology development expenditures are deferred.

While circumstances change and these times are unique, the market will bounce back; always has, always will – the only question is timing.

Impact Minerals has been awarded a $75,000 grant from the New South Wales Government in a nod to the company's technical accomplishments at its Broken Hill project. The windfall was awarded by the New Frontiers Cooperative Drilling grants programme and Impact will use the money to explore its NSW play for nickel-copper-platinum group metal deposits.

With the world crying out for non-fossil fuels and the uranium supply and demand curves predicted to cross over soon, Deep Yellow is sitting on a veritable powerhouse of uranium assets in Namibia that are moving rapidly towards being production ready ahead of an expected uranium price hike. In recent drilling at the Tumas 3 deposit, 85% of drill holes returned a result greater than 100ppm eU3O8 over 1m.

ASX-listed St George Mining’s latest geophysical program has identified potentially game changing new areas at depth along the Cathedrals Belt, some of which are untested for nickel-copper-cobalt-PGM mineralisation. The surveys were conducted to give the company an insight into the geological structure to depths of more than 5km. The surveys lit up multiple areas of interest that may either play host to nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation or show where faults are hiding.

Anglo Australian Resources has managed to get a drilling program going at its Mandilla project near Kalgoorlie in WA as many mining and exploration companies come to terms with operational restrictions as a result of COVID-19. The company has started on a program of three diamond drill “tails” that will test the extents of gold mineralisation at Mandilla East to 200m. It will also drill 27 RC holes at the project.

Venus Metals has completed a heliborne EM survey over its Bellchambers gold project east of Sandstone in WA. The company has zeroed in on ten new high priority targets that are sitting on the Western Ridge ‐ Mickey Well gold mineralised trend. It has identified 25 new targets in total at Bellchambers as a result of a recently completed “Xcite” airborne electromagnetic survey.

Novo Resources is continuing to execute on its strategy of picking up nuggety gold projects and has increased its presence in the goldfields of Victoria, famed for its long and rich mining history. Novo has entered into a deal that could see it land up to 75% of GBM Resources’ Malmsbury gold project and just over 4% of the ASX-listed company.

ASX-listed oiler, 88 Energy, has logged multiple hydrocarbon shows over several prospective oil zones whilst drilling its highly anticipated “Charlie-1” oil appraisal well on Alaska’s oil-rich North Slope. The well has now reached total depth and the company said its hydrocarbon zones are looking remarkably like the oil zones identified in a nearby offset well. With drilling operations now complete, wireline logging is underway.

After a year or two of scientific vectoring in on a nickel ore body in the famed Fraser Ranges, things are hotting up now for ASX-listed Legend Mining after it hit what may well be pay dirt in its latest drill campaign at the Rockford project. The company said this week it had hit an impressive, combined 42 metres worth of nickel and copper sulphides intersected at the Mawson prospect.

Lindian Resources’ high-grade conglomerate-hosted bauxite deposit at its Gaoual project in Guinea continues to bulk up, with the company confirming it has extended the Bouba plateau one kilometre to the north. Lindian has also verified the presence of conglomerate bauxite at Bouba South, which is currently sized at half a kilometre by 2.5km. The northern extension of Bouba is 4m thick Bouba South has an average width of 5m, both starting from the surface.

Classic Minerals managed to squeeze in a few priority RC drill holes at its Kat Gap project near Southern Cross in WA before being impeded by restrictions arising from coronavirus. New results show that gold mineralisation at Kat Gap is still open in all directions and very high grade with latest drill numbers showing 3m grading 62.10g/t gold from 36m, including a single metre grading a whopping 181g/t gold.

Troy Resources has recorded a three-fold increase in mineral reserves at the company’s Hicks-4 deposit that sits about 2km away from Troy’s operating Karouni gold mine in Guyana, South America. The company has also commenced trial mining at the nearby Ohio Creek discovery, just one of its regional deposits that have proximity to its existing plant. Troy said its operations remain unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Buru Energy’s executive chairman, Eric Streitberg, has taken a 55 per cent pay haircut and its board fees have been reduced by 40 per cent to help it ride out the current global Coronavirus financial storm. Buru’s strong balance sheet leaves it well placed to weather the storm, despite weak oil prices, with ongoing production at its Ungani oil field set to deliver further oil sales in mid-May.

Terrain Minerals is set to kick off its field campaign at the Wild-viper gold project near Leonora. It is looking to conduct a major first pass geochemical soil sampling program and will collect approximately 400 to 500 samples across three separate targets, which the company anticipates will throw up a grab bag of drill ready targets. Terrain previously picked up a rock sample grading 4.67 g/t gold at Wild-viper.

Image Resources says it has managed to shoulder the current Coronavirus inspired pandemic as it continues to operate its Boonanarring mineral sands project in WA with only marginal impacts on regular day-to-day activities. The Patrick Mutz run company’s mine site is located 80km north of Perth where production for January 2020 was a record 35,300 tonnes of heavy mineral concentrate.

Neometals has tabled some interesting pathfinder results from a significant air core drilling campaign across its Mt Edwards nickel project near Widgemooltha in WA. The program was designed to vector in on potential sulphide mineralisation across five of the company’s mining tenements and two broad target areas. Significant intercepts include 7m grading 0.63% nickel from 47m and 13m grading 0.46% nickel from 6m down hole.

Adriatic Metals has identified a number of new multi-metal exploration drill targets after modelling historical gravity data over its Bosnian license that includes its Rupice and Jurasevac-Brestic prospects. Some of the geophysical anomalies are adjacent to known discoveries and are ready for immediate drilling with a total of 29 drill pads approved for action to further define the extraordinary multi-metal deposits within its project area.