Announcements

MGC Pharmaceuticals recently unveiled Murcury Pharma, a new medicinal cannabis-based line for Australian and New Zealand markets. MGC has now seen an 85% increase in orders for its product, including Mercury Pharma 100, a prescription-only 100mg/mL canibodol solution and other white label cannabidiol products that are used for treatments such as anxiety, cancer and arthritis. The company’s revenues have now reached over $430,000.

Coziron Resources has recently vectored in on gold mineralisation at the Top Camp prospect at its Croydon project in the Pilbara with one 8m drill intercept going 10.2g/t gold, including 1m at 66.1g/t. Coziron’s technical team is now joining the dots from its Top Camp gold prospect to De Grey Mining’s new Hemi gold discovery, via a geological feature Coziron calls the Tabba Tabba shear zone.

Perth-based ASX listed Impact Minerals is cashed up with over $3m now in its war chest to throw at its exciting Broken Hill PGM project just as palladium and rhodium prices touch record highs. Impact locked away a $2.1m capital raise this week on the back of palladium prices hitting USD$2500 an ounce and rhodium prices bursting through the USD$10,000 an ounce mark.

Hot Chili is on track to deliver some exceptional drill intersections at its rapidly growing Cortadera porphyry copper-gold discovery in Chile with its first expansion diamond drill hole for 2020 still in mineralisation at 900m with 550m of mineralised porphyry already in the bag from the 350m mark. The company said it would extend the hole that is a 100m step-out from the largest porphyry to around 1,100m.

In what is looking like an industry trend now, Horizon Minerals has uncovered some strong gold intercepts amongst historical drilling data and mine design records at its Rose Hill gold project 45km west of the proposed Boorara mill in Kalgoorlie. The additional data points to the confirmation of high-grade gold mineralisation with both open pit and underground mining potential to over 500m vertical depth.

AVZ Minerals has executed a binding memorandum of understanding with the Congolese Government to create a “special economic zone” for the Manono Lithium and tin project in the Tanganyika Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo. A special economic zone has the potential to deliver significant economic stimulus to both AVZ and the local communities around Manono, with tax breaks high on the list.

Ardiden has opened the vaults of its Pickle Lake gold project in Ontario, Canada and discovered a swag of historical exploration records that cover its newly acquired Dorothy-Dobie and New Patricia properties that are along trend from Barrick Gold’s historical Golden Patricia mine. One 0.5m historical drill intercept showed a stellar 472.8 g/t gold, providing a touch of excitement for the Perth based company.

Middle Island Resources has picked up an additional 1,363 square kilometres of prospective iron oxide-copper-gold, or “IOCG” ground in the Northern Territory after the Government there lifted an exploration moratorium over the East Tennant province. The company now holds ten exploration licence applications covering 3,253 square kilometres that combined are known as the Barkly Super-Project.

Hammer Metals has both feet firmly planted across some tier-one mining districts around the country as it kicks off several major exploration programs including geophysical surveys and geological mapping at its Mt Isa IOGC project in Queensland and at its exciting Bronzewing South gold project in Western Australia. Gravity and EM surveys will be run across some of Hammer’s Mt Isa JOGMEC JV ground and 12,000m of aircore and RC drilling will test priority targets at Bronzewing.

Aurora Labs has successfully completed a testing program of samples of corrosion-resistant, 316L stainless steel using the company’s patented multi-layered concurrent printing technology. The independent test results have exceeded ASTM standards in tensile and yield strength. The company said this was an important step towards demonstrating that its multi-layered concurrent proprietary technology is viable and efficient.

Rox Resources and its JV partner, Venus Minerals have hit over two ounces to the tonne gold with one new drill intercept at Youanmi’s Grace prospect. The assays just in include one hole that returned 4m at 69.5 g/t gold from 28m. The JV partners also reported solid gold hits from the December 2019 drill program that tested targets to the north and south of the old Youanmi gold mine.

Agricultural asset development and management firm, Alterra, has appointed a new member to its team with Paul Good taking up the position of South West Regional Manager, bringing with him nearly 20 years’ of industry know-how. Alterra is looking to shake up the agribusiness sector with a business model that will see it co-invest with mostly institutional investors in managed crops with avocados looking like being the early opener.

Big River Gold is looking to turn what is usually considered a waste mineral into a potentially lucrative by-product from its Borborema gold project in North-Eastern Brazil. With mica-rich gold ore set to be processed through a conventional mill, a few tweaks of the processing flowsheet could see Big River pocket a windfall from its mica offtake that would normally find its way into the waste tailings dam.

Classic Minerals has returned to its high-grade Kat Gap gold discovery for another round of RC drilling with a view to chasing northerly and southerly extensions of recent drill intercepts that returned as much as 10m at an ounce to the tonne. Up to 3,500m of new RC drill holes are now underway in an attempt to stretch the strike of the deposit from 500m to more than 800m.

Lithium Australia plans to continue research its proprietary recovery process to extract lithium from fine and contaminated waste materials after being awarded a Federal Government grant of $1.3m. The company has also applied for a patent over the intellectual property from its research into the recovery of lithium from fine spodumene waste and tailings ore. The funds will advance the technology that has ramifications for the hard-rock lithium industry.

Kingwest Resources said its Pericles prospect has booked an 87% upgrade in total estimated resources to 79,500 ounces of contained gold which pushes the total near-surface resources at the Menzies Gold project to 208,300oz of gold. The indicated resource at Pericles now sits at 630,000 tonnes at 1.8g/t gold and the inferred resource is 780,000 tonnes grading 1.7g/t gold.

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.