Matt Birney

Novo Resources looks to be onto a new alluvial goldfield in the Pilbara after it unearthed some golden paydirt from a terrace at the “Road to Paradise” prospect, just 11km from its flagship Egina gold project. The company has also analysed a bulk gravel sample at Egina, that yielded 562.25 grams from about 414 cubic metres. Novo is one of the modern pioneers of the Pilbara alluvial gold scene, treading over new ground each exploration phase with outcomes that are wildly unknown but potentially lucrative.

Impact Minerals is gearing up to get back onto its ground in NSW to explore for look-alikes to Alkane’s recent revered Boda porphyry copper-gold discovery that lies just 5km north of Impact’s ground in the Lachlan Fold Belt. The company is now waiting on assays from recent reconnaissance rock chip sampling to hone the next round of soil geochemistry and geophysics exploration surveys at its Commonwealth Project near Dubbo.

Pitt Street Research, a Sydney-based research house, has broken ASX-listed Big River Gold down into the sum of its parts and says it has set a “base case” share price target of 9.4c a share for the Perth based company that is currently trading at 2.3c a share. Pitt Street’s “optimistic” case for Big River would see it achieve a price target as high as 15c a share. The research house found that at the time of writing its report, Big River’s enterprise value versus its inground resources was around USD$5.50 an ounce.

Buru Energy is delivering solid production rates of 1,500-1,600 barrels of oil per day from its Ungani field east of Broome despite wet season rainfall necessitating short term shut-ins to wells and causing minor flooding across roads. The shut-ins have enabled Buru crews to perform valuable down hole maintenance on a number of wells to keep production at a strong rate, with the next oil lifting scheduled for late March.

Image Resources has reported a second consecutive month of record heavy mineral sands concentrate production at its 100% owned, high grade, zircon-rich Boonanarring mineral sands project north of Perth. Production for January 2020 was a record 35,300 tonnes of HMC and is a consequence of higher ore grades coming in from the mining of Block ‘B’ after relocating the equipment from the initial site at Block ‘C’.

88 Energy expects to be spudding its high-impact Charlie-1 oil appraisal well onshore in Alaska in late February as construction of the ice access road nears 80% completion. The company said the well will test up to seven stacked targets that could have a gross mean prospective oil resource as high as 1.6 billion barrels. Oil shows were observed historically at multiple levels in an old, un-tested offset well.

Telco innovator, Vonex, is expecting its annualised recurring revenues to jump by 50% from next month when it completes the takeover of telecommunications and data wholesaler, 2SG Wholesale. The ASX-listed cloud-based telco said that it has completed due diligence on 2SG and its acquisition contract is now binding, with the deal expected to be consummated by months end.

It is hard to understand how the old-timers left 49.5 g/t gold dirt behind at Kingwest’s Lady Shenton mine near Menzies, however that is what the recently unearthed records show from face sampling done over 100 years ago. Mines Department records from the long-abandoned mine include a 22m long drive going 49.5 g/t within a 45m long section going 22.3 g/t gold.

Anglo Australian Resources seemingly can't miss at its Mandilla project near Kalgoorlie in WA after it again hit eye wateringly long gold mineralised intersections at the project during infill drilling. With gold now looking to be settled at well over A$2,000 per ounce, Anglo’s latest hits including 45m grading 2.33g/t gold from 82m downhole are looking seriously lucrative.

The market doesn’t have long to wait now to find out exactly how much hard cash can be churned out of the world’s largest undeveloped lithium mine as AVZ Minerals says it is 95% through its definitive feasibility study for the giant Manono lithium-tin project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. AVZ is now teetering right on the edge of making that difficult leap from explorer to miner.

Lithium Australia subsidiary, VSPC, is to receive a $1.6m grant as part of a $5m, federally-funded research program to develop "fast charging" lithium-ion batteries for new generation trams with a view to eliminating overhead wires. VSPC will be joined by Australia’s CSIRO, the University of Queensland and Soluna Australia. VSPC, or the “Very Small Particle Company”, is a leader in the lithium battery cathode powder field.

With billions of dollars being ploughed into new battery factories around the globe, Altech Chemicals says that its 4N high purity alumina product will potentially be in even greater demand in the next generation of “solid state” lithium-ion batteries. As the market looks to move away from liquid electrolyte batteries, Altech says its HPA will still be required and potentially in even greater quantities for solid state batteries.

Great Southern Mining has scored a major hit from its maiden exploration program at its Cox’s find deposit, 70km north of Laverton in WA, delivering an ounce to the tonne drill intersection over 5m. Within the 5m intersection there was also an ultra-high-grade section going 143.0g/t gold over a metre.

Middle Island Resources has the wind at its back and prolific investor, Stephen Copulos by its side, as the company launches into a 20,000m drilling blitz across the Sandstone Gold project in WA. The first phase of this program involves 13,000 metres of RC drilling across 14 prospective looking “open pit” gold targets that according to Middle Island, have the potential to lift existing mineral resources ahead of another update to the project’s pre-feasibility study.

Big River Gold has hosted an opening ceremony at the site of its Borborema gold project near the town of Currais Novos in Brazil. The ceremony was attended by local business leaders, community members and politicians who learnt about the project and its impending benefits to the local area. Big River said it is looking to employ some 375 people locally when the project is in full swing.

Venus Metals and Rox Resources have defined an interesting new gold prospect from soil survey results just in. The new soil anomaly is located 4km south of and along strike from the historical Penny West gold mine that Spectrum Resources just offloaded to Ramelius for around $200m. It has a similar geochemical signature to that found in soils over the recent Sovereign gold discovery nearby.

After snapping up over 90% of Azumah Resources shares, private equity firm, Ibaera Capital, will mop up the remaining 10% under the compulsory acquisition provisions in the Corporations Act. Ibaera got to just over 90% last week and told shareholders they would still receive their money for their remaining shares after the compulsory acquisition provisions kick in. It seems that the message hit home, with Ibaera making it to over 93% by Monday.

Spectrum Metals’ share price has jumped 40% from Friday’s close on news of a take-over bid from gold titan, Ramelius Resources which has the blessing of the Spectrum board. The cash and scrip offer represent a 70% premium to Spectrum’s 30-day volume weighted average share price. Ramelius says there are strong synergies between the two companies and the board of Spectrum has endorsed those views.

Horizon Minerals has developed a plan to bank between $2.8m and $5.8m over 8 months from toll treating its gold from Boorara near Kalgoorlie. A feasibility study suggests that open pit mining and toll milling of Horizon’s Regal, Crown Jewel and Royal deposits would only cost around $440k in upfront capital costs. Horizon is looking to toll treat at Golden Mile Milling’s Lakewood plant, 7km to the West.

New modelling work at Hot Chili’s Cortadera copper-gold discovery in Chile has the Perth based company convinced that its resource, just in the existing discovery zone, has the potential to grow into a “tier-1” style deposit that is capable of hosting over 5mt’s of contained copper. A recent deviated drill hole unexpectedly delivered 92m @ 0.5% copper and 0.2 g/t gold at end of hole.

Calidus Resources has jumped on the opportunity to pick up an accommodation village, signalling that it is getting serious about developing its Warrawoona gold project. The accommodation modules will be stored in Marble Bar until all internal and external development approvals are in place. The company has applied for an early works permit to fast track deployment of the camp ahead of receiving final approvals.

Coziron Resources looks to be onto a gold mineralised system at its Croydon project in the Pilbara as it vectors in on the higher grades at the project. One 8m intercept from its first pass drill program went 10.2g/t gold and 11 of the 13 drill holes were mineralised. Intercepts were clustered around the Top Camp prospect where gold anomalies were recorded from earlier soil and auger samples.

A trip to the Mines Department appears to have paid off in spades for Kingwest Resources who has unearthed a treasure trove of lucrative looking historical face sample results taken along development drives and rises at its Menzies project. The results from 1924, show some amazing grades along the faces such as 22.3g/t gold over 31m of development at an average sampled width of 2.1m.

Kairos Minerals has spied visible gold amongst an extensive array of gold mineralised soil anomalies at its Fuego Prospect in the Pilbara region of W.A. It said that multiple gold-in-soil anomalies have defined an in-situ gold target at Fuego over 10km of strike that contains results above 30ppb of gold. The company will now use an EIS State Government grant of $150,000 toward its next RC and diamond drilling campaign.

ClearVue’s solar window glass technology is gaining momentum and now has a firm foothold in renewable energy markets across the globe. The Perth company is now on the radar of the global smart product building industry. ClearVue has developed two products that can be fitted to window glass that are capable of turning the glass into an energy generating panel.

Ora Banda Mining has increased its Waihai gold resource by 190% to 2.46Mt grading 2.6g/t gold for 206,000 ounces. The company’s total Davyhurst project mineral resource now stands at 23.8Mt grading 2.6g/t gold for just shy of 2m ounces. A swathe of new drilling metres has been ploughed into the broader Davyhurst project with the global resource now sitting at 23.8Mt grading 2.6g/t gold for just shy of 2m ounces.

Australian Potash has received positive feedback from the EPA who found no material issues or fatal flaws with its over-arching environmental review document for the Lake Wells sulphate of potash project near Laverton. The ASX-listed company will now address issues raised under the staged assessment process and resubmit its environmental document for the final approval stage with a view to clearing one of the largest project hurdles.

Horizon Minerals has kicked off what is shaping up to be a highly anticipated drilling and resource development program at its newly acquired Rose Hill project near Coolgardie in the prolific Goldfield’s region of WA. The project already boasts a resource of some 1.2 million tonnes grading 2.49 grams per tonne for 95,200 ounces of gold and recent excellent intersections include 11m grading 8.79g/t gold from 43m and 10m grading 6.28g/t gold from 28m.

Ardiden Ltd has invited veteran Geologist and its current CEO, Rob Longley, to step up into the Managing Director’s chair as the company sets its sights firmly on its Canadian gold exploration and development assets. Mr Longley recently drove the doubling of Ardiden’s ground position at its Pickle Lake gold camp in Canada where it is sitting on an initial resource of 110,000 ounces grading a respectable 4.4g/t gold.

Black Rock Mining is gearing up to develop its Mahenge graphite mine in Tanzania, having now opened three offices at local villages. The Mahenge graphite project boasts a 212 million tonne resource grading a respectable 7.8% total graphite content and the company says it has now established key relationships with locals and Government, both of which are key requirements for doing business in Tanzania.

AVZ Minerals is on track to deliver its definitive feasibility study in the coming months, with phase two metallurgical test work delivering an exceptional batch of results that reinforce the scalability of its giant Manono lithium and tin project in the DRC. AVZ said that it had produced a lithium concentrate grading 6.3% during testwork, easily surpassing the generally accepted threshold of 5%.

Listed telco innovator, Vonex, has entered into a preliminary agreement with the Canadian company, Silverstream SEZC, to sell its legacy entitlement to future iron ore production royalties from the Koolyanobbing Iron Ore Project. Subject to a definitive sale and purchasing agreement being executed and certain milestones being met, Vonex will receive total consideration of AUD$2.5 million in three instalments.