Bulls N' Bears (Commercial Content)

ASX-listed King River Resources has been buoyed by tax credits of up to $975,000 under the Federal Government’s exploration incentive scheme, with the explorer confirming the tax office has approved its application to participate in the Junior Minerals Exploration Incentive program. The tax credits can be distributed to its Australian resident shareholders who are issued new shares from any of its capital raisings in 2020-21.

Seeking to complete a trifecta of polymetallic exploration successes in Vietnam, Blackstone Minerals has turned its sights to the Ta Cuong prospect. The company hopes its strategy of geophysical targeting may reveal a third lucrative deposit to add to its coffers already brimming with the spoils uncovered at the nearby King Cobra and Ban Chang prospects.

ASX-listed explorer King River Resources is set to crank up the drill bit next month at its high-grade Mount Remarkable gold project in WA’s East Kimberley region after delays caused by coronavirus pandemic restrictions. Bonanza near-surface gold hits from previous drilling included a best result of 4m grading 113.29 grams per tonne gold including 1m going more than 10 ounces per tonne.

Great Southern Mining has laid claim to the discovery of what could be a significant intrusion-related gold system containing polymetallic credits in its highly prospective Edinburgh Park project in North Queensland. In what is the first systematic gold exploration in the region, the company said its initial results produced all the hallmarks of a major mineralised system.

Undaunted by coronavirus-related delays, Barton Gold’s exploration plans are back on track as it prepares to kick off a drilling campaign aimed at resuscitating its Tarcoola gold project in the Gawler Craton, South Australia.

ASX-listed Lindian Resources has tabled world-class, high-grade alumina numbers at its Gaoual conglomerate bauxite project in Guinea, West Africa. The maiden indicated resource estimate for Lindian’s readily mineable surface deposit of 102 million tonnes at 49.5 per cent alumina includes uber-rich tonnage of 84Mt at 51.2 per cent alumina.

ASX-listed PharmAust Limited has delivered the final report on its successful Phase II clinical trial, using the Monepantel drug to treat cancer in dogs, to the US$8.8B market capped pharmaceutical giant, NYSE-listed Elanco. Under an option agreement inked two years ago with PharmAust, the animal health-focused mega-Pharma company now has six months to take up the option to licence, manufacture, and market Monepantel globally.

Hammer Metals has returned further encouraging assays from drilling of the Target 1 prospect at its North Orelia gold project in Western Australia’s Yandal greenstone belt, which boasts an enviable gold endowment of 24 million ounces. Better intersections from the first 66 holes, or 3,889m, of a planned 8,000m aircore program were 4m grading 5.79 grams per tonne gold from 40m depth and 4m going 4.38g/t gold from 48m.

Classic Minerals has tabled first pass metallurgical numbers from its Kat Gap project near Southern Cross, WA. The test work results show an average gold recovery at Kat Gap of up to 75 per cent in the oxide material using a low-cost gravity separation process. Conventional cyanide leaching of the gravity gold concentrate showed between 95 per cent and 96 per cent recovery from oxide and fresh ore.

In a move that will bring Horizon Minerals’ gold assets to the fore, the Perth-based company will divest its Nadine Well West Australian copper project to Cyprium Metals Limited for $1.5m in cash and Cyprium shares in a deal that will see Horizon retain exposure to the prospective copper-gold-PGM region in the Murchison district.

Troy Resources has weathered the challenges of Guyana’s wet season, producing impressive drilling results while maintaining operations at its Karouni gold project in South America. The standout diamond drilling results from underneath the existing Smarts open pit include a 32-metre zone grading 4.29 grams per tonne gold from 168m down hole. At the Goldstar prospect, near surface RC results also include 17m grading 2.21g/t gold from just 3m.

Emerging ASX-listed gold player Calidus Resources is set to kick off an initial round of regional drilling at its recently acquired Otways gold-copper project in the Pilbara, in tandem with continued drilling to beef up a maiden ore reserve estimate at its developing Warrawoona gold asset, about 50km away also in the Pilbara.

Hot Chili has the drill rigs firing again at its Cortadera copper-gold project in Chile, zeroing in on extensions to the high-grade zones across a 2.3km strike that is likely to form the backbone of an imminent maiden resource at the project. Hot Chili has doubled the size of the mineralised system in less than 18 months at Cortadera which the company believes may propel it to Tier 1 status.

ASX-listed oiler, 88 Energy will now mop up all remaining stock in its Alaskan neighbour, XCD Energy, after its takeover bid secured 90.97 per cent of XCD’s shares and 93.31 per cent of listed options. Its all-scrip bid as originally announced back in April went unconditional last month after the company achieved the 50 per cent required threshold.

ASX-listed high purity alumina player Altech Chemicals has reached the next construction milestone of its proposed US$280 million processing plant development at Johor Bahru in Malaysia as it works towards a production start-up target of 2023. Engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning contractor, German engineering firm SMS, has now completed the remaining component of the Johor Bahru project’s stage two work – an electrical substation – at the Altech plant site.

As Novo Resources ramps up to a full 2020 exploration program capacity, the company has continued to produce impressive results showing ‘proof-of-concept’ that its Egina Terrace in the Pilbara is host to an extensive shallow gold-bearing gravel deposit. Bulk samples from broad areas across the Egina mining lease have yielded gold particle counts exceeding 48 particles per tonne from consecutive sample pits.

Uranium exploration is undergoing a resurgence as the world grapples with the challenge of feeding a seemingly unending appetite for energy. Against this backdrop, ASX-listed Deep Yellow is sitting on a veritable powerhouse of potentially stored nuclear energy across its portfolio of Namibian uranium projects. The latest drilling results from its Nova JV point to what could be the addition of another significantly mineralised system.

Classic Minerals has reported a spectacular high-grade gold drill hit from a new mineralised zone at its Kat Gap deposit in WA. The company’s resumed drilling campaign returned an intersection of 4m grading 76.72g/t gold from 79m depth including 1m going a whopping 304g/t gold from 82m or an eye-watering 10 ounces of gold per tonne.

Wiluna Mining is continuing to deliver strong results from its namesake project located in the north-eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. The Golden Age deposit and adjacent Lennon Zone are both looking likely to supplement the company’s free milling ore pipeline, with the newly identified material set to improve cash flow for the coming 15 months and assist the company in funding its transition to stage two sulphide ore production.

ASX-listed mining “software-as-a-service” provider, K2fly, has continued to expand its mining software offerings by partnering with Wesfarmers-owned Decipher, to create an integrated monitoring and governance platform for tailings storage facilities. The partnership provides an elegant solution to effectively manage mineral waste – a hot topic concerning industry, regulators and environmentalists.

ASX-listed gold explorer, Great Southern Mining, has launched a new drilling campaign at its 100% owned Mon Ami gold project near Laverton in WA to follow up on previous high-grade RC drill hits. The positive results from its 2018 program culminated in a maiden resource estimate of 1.1 million tonnes of ore averaging 1.7 grams per tonne for a contained 59,000 ounces.

ASX-listed mineral sands miner, Image Resources, has managed to relieve itself of a previously unloved heavy mineral concentrate inventory that was mounting in the wake of uncertain economic conditions brought on by coronavirus restrictions. The company’s key Chinese offtake customers have now purchased 100,000 tonnes of HMC from the Boonanarring mineral sands operation 80km north of Perth.

ASX-listed base metals hopeful, Blackstone Minerals, has purchased another diamond drill rig to accelerate its exploration at the emerging Ban Chang nickel prospect where it is looking to take the closed down Ta Khoa processing plant out of mothballs. The third rig in the company’s armoury will pepper Ban Chang with new holes after its first round of drilling there encountered sulphide nickel mineralisation.

Another weighty suite of nickel-copper-cobalt results from Legend Mining’s Mawson prospect in Western Australia’s Fraser Range has again eclipsed all previous drill numbers, with combined intercepts from two separate drill holes spanning a length of 53.85 metres and nearly 100 metres respectively. Included in the new results is a 19.2m interval grading 1.69 per cent nickel, 1.23 per cent copper and 0.09 per cent cobalt from 97.9m.

Kingwest Resources has identified multiple new high-grade lodes at its Menzies gold project in Western Australia. The company is now undertaking optimisation studies on its near surface gold resources to determine how the recent aggressive drilling campaign has potentially enhanced the economic viability of the project. New high-grade lodes have been discovered at the Central Zone.

PolarX has set the date for two diamond drill rigs to arrive on site at its exciting Zackly East gold-copper prospect at its USA based Alaska Range project. Around 3,000 metres of diamond drilling is planned to follow up on previous broad, high-grade gold and copper hits including an impressive 55m intersection grading 2.8 grams per tonne gold and 0.6 per cent copper.

ASX-listed mining “software-as-a-service” provider, K2fly, has defied the financial fallout of the global coronavirus pandemic as its RCubed mineral resource and reserve reporting software solution continues to attract more resources big hitters. The latest multinational group to take up K2fly’s mineral resource governance software package is French-headquartered nuclear energy giant, Orano, who has signed a five-year contract with K2fly that has a total value of A$300,000.

Just weeks after Kairos Minerals moved to double its Pilbara land holdings, the Perth based company has collected a suite of high-grade rock chips going up to nearly 13 grams per tonne gold at its Skywell project in the Pilbara with five samples coming in at an average grade of 4.8 grams per tonne gold across a 130-metre length of outcropping quartz vein.

Venus Metals and Rox Resources have kicked off an RC drilling program at their Penny West Deep South and Sovereign prospects at the JV partners’ Youanmi gold project in WA as they continue their quest to revive the historic gold mining region. The partners have already enjoyed significant success at the project with long, ounce plus intersections already rolling off the drillbit at Youanmi.

Element 25’s sub-sampling of diamond core drilled back in 2013 from the Coodamudgi deposit resulted in manganese grades going up to 42.3 per cent right from surface. Coodamudgi is located near the company’s Yanneri Ridge resource within its Butcherbird project in the Pilbara. Butcherbird already has an outstanding pre-feasibility study wrapped around it showing a pre-tax NPV of $283m at a manganese concentrate grade of 33 percent.

Blackstone Minerals’ Ban Chang prospect has delivered another set of impressive numbers with a nearly 10 metre long drill intersection going 1.45 per cent nickel, 0.9 per cent copper, 0.08 per cent cobalt and 0.7 grams per tonne platinum, palladium plus gold, from 57m down hole. The new result is from a step-out hole at the company’s Ta Khoa nickel-copper-PGM project in Vietnam that was drilled over one kilometre away from Blackstone’s maiden hole at Ban Chang.

Middle Island Resources' Sandstone project looks to be the gift that just keeps on giving with latest drill results showing a 4m hit going 50.5 g/t gold which includes a 1m section at a crazy 198 grams per tonne gold – and only 3 metres from surface. Additional results from the Ridge prospect are expected to flow over the coming weeks.