Bulls N' Bears (Commercial Content)

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.

Legend Mining continues to build on its success in the Fraser Range with recent drilling extending the footprint of the Mawson nickel discovery yet again. Shallow air core drilling has intersected broad zones of nickel-copper mineralisation, pointing to a deeper sulphide source. Legend has its ears laid back now as it vectors in on the source of its recent success.

Altech Chemicals has been given an official “green” classification for its Malaysian high purity alumina project from an independent research centre, opening the door to the “green bond market” that was valued at nearly USD$250b last year. Green bonds are an environmentally conscious financing instrument used by investors who are looking to invest in environmentally sustainable projects.

Just as it is breaking ground at its gold project near Kalgoorlie, ASX-listed Horizon Minerals has lit up its Nanadie Well copper-gold project near Meekatharra with intercepts like 12m at 2.16 per cent copper and 2.16g/t gold from just 20m down hole. Horizon said that particular drill hole also included 1m at an impressive 3.7 per cent copper and almost an ounce to the tonne gold.

Ora Banda Mining has produced a swag of solid gold intercepts from exploration drilling at multiple sites along the mineralised corridors that make up its Davyhurst gold project located north west of Kalgoorlie. Strong hits include 2m at 19.22g/t, 4m at 10.78g/t and 9m at 5.53g/t gold. Drilling at the underground Golden Eagle mine also did not disappoint with 2.1m grading 12.93g/t gold.

Just 18 months after start up at its Boonanarring mine north of Perth, ASX-listed mineral sands miner, Image Resources, continues to hit its milestones with a third scheduled debt repayment of US$7.7m now bowled over. Image has been delivering strong production numbers that routinely exceed the plant’s design specifications and it has systematically defined multiple new ore horizons around the mine.

Lindian Resources’ has thrown up some pulse quickening, ultra-high-grade alumina numbers at both the Bouba north and Bouba south extensions of the Bouba plateau at its Gaoual conglomerate bauxite project in Guinea, Africa. Three holes from Bouba North returned alumina grades between 50 and 54.4 per cent alumina with four holes at Bouba South grading even higher, between 54.9 and 58.5 per cent alumina.

PolarX has its elephant gun firmly trained on the elephant sized mineral deposits in Alaska with the ASX listed company getting set to undertake follow up drilling of its extraordinary 55m long drill hit that showed 2.8 grams per tonne gold and 0.6% copper. Whilst the Zackly Main Skarn is already showing 213,000 ounces of gold, the real prize appears to be at Zackly East.

Element 25 has delivered an outstanding pre-feasibility study for its Butcherbird manganese project in the Pilbara, revealing that the operation will produce a pre-tax NPV in real terms AUD$283M at an incredible IRR of 223 per cent on project capital costs totaling AUD$14.5M. The project shows an initial mine life of 42 years and annual free cash flows of AUD$24M.

Unlisted private equity backed Barton Gold has received an all-important nod of approval from a South Australian Government authority tasked with approving or rejecting non-military use of its minerals rich military land in South Australia. Barton said this week it had secured Resource Exploration and Production Permits from the Woomera Prohibited Area Coordination Office known as “WPACO”.

Coziron Resources now has a diamond rig operating at its Top Camp prospect in the Pilbara, undertaking a second phase of drilling designed to follow up some exciting previous drill numbers such as 8 metres grading 10.2 grams per tonne gold from 135m down hole. The company said it will drill around three holes to about 200m depth across the 1.5km long, 400m wide prospect.

Despite the current Coronavirus inspired market challenges, ASX-listed Hot Chili has encountered no difficulty in completing a $5m placement to sophisticated and institutional investors to progress its burgeoning Cortadera copper-gold discovery in Chile. Existing shareholders will also get a piece of the action with an additional $3.9m expected to come in from a non-renounceable rights issue.

TSX-listed Novo Resources has uncovered a third, broad, shallow, alluvial gold-bearing channel at its Paradise project in the Pilbara after returning to the field recently. Novo also said assays of alluvial gravels from its nearby Egina mining lease returned a solid 0.84 grams gold per cubic metre from bulk samples that are proving better than traditional drilling in sizing up its conglomerate gold opportunity.

Ora Banda Mining has landed on a final resource estimate of 30,000 ounces of contained gold in the open pit section of its Callion gold deposit in WA’s Goldfields, up 114 per cent on previous estimates and now with a higher grade of 3.5g/t. The company is now working on a design to take the existing open hit from 40m down to a depth of 85m.

ASX-listed Legend Mining continues to fatten up its emerging, massive nickel-copper sulphide discovery at Mawson in Western Australia’s Fraser Range. Assay results tabled last week from diamond drilling returned two intercepts in one hole showing a total of 36.6m of mineralisation with grades increasing significantly at depth. Assay results just in from another hole bring the total mineralisation in that hole to 107.9m.

Buru Energy has received $1.2m in cash for its share of the latest sale of crude oil from its Ungani oil field in Western Australia’s Canning basin. This is the third oil sale for the year and rounds out a solid first half for Buru that was already sitting on a cash pot of $30 million at the end of the March quarter.

Blackstone Minerals’ King Cobra nickel discovery at its Ta Khoa nickel-PGM project in Vietnam looks to have plenty of bite left in it yet after the Perth based ASX-listed company nailed a near 38m intersection going 1.12 per cent nickel right from the surface. Whilst the platinum group element results are still to come, the nickel results are looking lucrative.