Bulls N' Bears (Commercial Content)

Surefire Resources has kicked off a new, two-phase drill campaign, starting at its Yidby gold prospect in WA's mid-west region, followed by a maiden drill program at the company's nearby Phat Boy copper project. The 2500m, 12-hole reverse circulation program will test nine newly identified targets recently revealed after a review old geophysical data, along with structural interpretations from available diamond-core and drill-chip relogging.

Aguia Resources will lease, rather than build, a 100,000tpa phosphate processing plant in Southern Brazil, fast-tracking expected production to mid-2025 and sidestepping a multi-million-dollar capex bill. With an up-front cost of A$1.3 million, the 10-year lease will incur a A$43,000 monthly rental, equating to just A$5.13 a tonne.

Reach Resources' recent strategic review of its Murchison South gold project near Payne's Find in Western Australia has remodelled and identified a number of open mineralised zones at its Blue Heaven prospect. The review has led to a theoretical repositioning of the Primrose Fault - a key mineralisation control at the project – which has exposed gaps in the block model and opened-up Blue Heaven's western flank for further exploration.

King River Resources has discovered two new zones exhibiting high-grade gold from its phase-one, 28-hole reverse-circulation drill program at the company's Kurundi project in Australia's top-end. A phase-two campaign is already underway to further interrogate the new finds, with one zone sitting in the Kurundi Main Central target area and the other about 250m to the south.

BMG Resources has received commitments to raise $1.5 million through a share placement to sophisticated and institutional investors which will fully fund its extensional drilling program at its Abercromby gold project near Wiluna, WA. The placement will comprise 150 million new fully paid shares at $0.01 cents per share in two Tranches with the new shares ranking equally with BMG's existing shares on issue.

Triangle Energy Global has locked in Silver City Drilling's Rig 24 for a March spud of its Becos-1 wildcat well in West Australia's Perth Basin targeting up to 21 million barrels of oil. The well will reach its main targets, at a depth of between 700- 800m with a chance to hit an additional reservoir on its way to an eventual depth of 1140m.

Meeka Metals has deftly rid itself of a proposed debt facility and 12,000 gold call options that would have encumbered its soon to be completed gold mine near Meekatharra as investors stump up $35m in equity. A DFS tabled in May that showed the project will spit out pre-tax free cash of $577m is set to be enhanced in December with updated modelling.

Allup Silica has undertaken further analysis on its 2023 air-core drill samples and identified promising rare earths, uranium and graphite mineralisation at its Pink Bark project near Esperance in WA's Albany Fraser region. The campaign originally identified a significant kaolin clay deposit that the company believes may contain a resource of between 700,000 and 1.2 million tonnes.

In this edition of Bulls N' Bears Big Hits, we examine some notable drill intercepts revealed on the ASX, including from Ora Gold's Crown Prince which hit 20m at 277.36g/t gold, including 4m at 1368g/t gold. We also take a close look at other interesting drill hits from last week as reported by Axel Rare Earths' hit from Brazil and Piche Resources big uranium hit in WA's Ashburton region.

Terrain Minerals has delivered an exploration target for its Larin's Lane prospect of between 25 and 33m tonnes at a total rare earths oxide grade between 880 and 980ppm TREO and from 19 to 21ppm gallium. The company says it expects to launch drilling next year to update that exploration target estimate once results from the program are to hand.

Strickland Metals has launched phase two metallurgical testing to test metal recoveries before locking down processing flowsheets from its Shanac deposit, part of the company's Rogozna gold and base metals project in Serbia, after bulk samples arrived at ALS Laboratory in Perth. The 400kg sample, made up of core from Shanac is now under the supervision of Macromet, a specialist mineral processing consultant.

Aurum Resources' bid for Mako Gold could create a new West African golden-force with $20 million in cash, its own fleet of drill-rigs and a string of well mineralised projects within cooee of each other. And this isn't the first rodeo for Aurum managing director Caigen Wang who has done it all before in Côte D'Ivoire having built the 3.8m ounce Abujar gold mine on the same structural trend.

With “hematite” iron ore discoveries slowing to a trickle, billionaires and others are turning to the once-maligned poor cousin of the iron ore industry “magnetite” that comes with almost biblical scale.

This week's Bulls N' Bears Runner of the Week is … Green Critical Minerals. The critical mineral explorer picked up some new groundbreaking graphite technology that can produce high-thermal conductivity material. Li-S Energy ran hard after revealing improvements to its lithium-sulfur battery tech, while other movers and shakers this week were Asian Battery Metals and Red Mountain Mining.

Titanium Sands has won approval from Sri Lanka's Geological Survey and Mines Bureau to consolidate the five main licences at its Mannar mineral sands project to assist the process of obtaining an industrial mining licence. The consolidation is a requirement of the country's “Board of Investment” in order to seek foreign investment approval for the project.

St George Mining has received the backing of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais via a Memorandum of Understanding to assist with fast-tracking its Araxà niobium-REE project in Brazil. The MoU covers assistance with regulatory approvals and will see both parties collaborate on other areas that will support the domestic supply chains for niobium, rare earths and related downstream products.

Octava Minerals is preparing to kick off a gravity and seismic program ahead of a drilling campaign at its Yallalong project 220km northeast of Geraldton in Western Australia in the hunt for antimony. Following earlier mapping and rock-chip sampling, the company will conduct detailed geophysical surveys aimed at identifying shear zones and rock boundaries, key indicators for unearthing mineralised fluid pathways.

88 Energy has wrapped up a successful 2D seismic program across its petroleum exploration licence in Namibia's Owambo Basin with initial analysis picking up significant subsurface structures. The company will soon begin crunching the processed data in collaboration with joint venture partner Monitor Exploration and look to produce an independent prospective resource estimate by April next year.

It feels like Groundhog Day after Strickland Metals served up yet another massive drill hit from its Serbian copper-gold Medenovac prospect within the company's Rogozna project. The latest drill campaign has thrown up a significant 223m intersection grading 1.7g/t gold equivalent from 179m including 43m at 4.6 g/t gold equivalent from 357m. The mineralisation now strikes for 150m.

ABx Group's 83 per cent-owned subsidiary ALCORE has made significant strides in its efforts to produce high-value hydrogen fluoride from waste after reporting its highest-ever recovery from its single stage fluorine reactor. The company reported a massive 97 per cent fluorine recovery from its 2-stage fluorine reactor, including an 85 per cent recovery from first stage processing of waste produced from the aluminium smelting process confirming a lucrative commercial pathway for the company.

Meeka Metals' Murchison gold project, 50km north of Meekatharra, is ahead of schedule with its 136-man camp and haul road nearing completion, targeting a mid-2025 first gold pour. And with 88 of the 136 accommodation rooms now fully commissioned, Meeka has importantly, created the opportunity to save some valuable time by ensuring space for the expanding workforce on-site.

Infinity Lithium non-exec chairman Adrian Byass will step up into the roles of executive chairman and interim CEO as the company shifts its operational focus to Spain for its San José lithium project. Infinity has been pushing hard to obtain the relevant project approvals and is working with the Mines Department to establish a public consultation period, hoping to work with stakeholders and finalise the approval process.

Led by a refreshed management team including the return of prodigal son and founder, managing director Jeromy Young, video technology innovator Atomos has posted a remarkable 72.5 per cent year on year improvement in gross profit margin. The company has also confirmed a six per cent lift in sales growth over the previous corresponding period driven by strong uptake of its revamped Ninja and Shinobi II core products.

Red Metal has been knocked over by punters in the rush for shares after its latest share purchase plan received applications totalling $6.6 million blowing an initial target of $2 million out of the water. The company's exploration plans at its Sybella rare earths project in Queensland and drill programs at its other prospective targets are now fully-funded for the next year.

In this week's edition of Bulls N' Bears Big Hits we examine some notable drill intercepts on the ASX including Astral Resources' 25m hit at 24.3g/t gold that contains 3m going a stellar 177 g/t gold. We also take a look at Core Lithium's results from its Shoobridge gold-lithium project in the NT and Arika Resources' Yundamindra project in WA.

An airborne survey flown by White Cliff Minerals has uncovered multiple big copper targets at its Hulk prospect, part of the company's Rae copper project in Canada's Nunavut Territory. The three conductors align with a recent rock chip assay picked up as part of a maiden survey, which came in at 1.65 per cent copper.

This week's Bulls N' Bears Runner of the Week is … Peak Minerals. The junior miner acquired a large swathe of ground prospective for uranium-rutile in the West African nation of Cameroon. Yandal Resources also ran hard after a series of impressive gold-drilling hits, while other movers and shakers this week were Argent Minerals and TZ Limited.

Aguia Resources has finally won a longstanding court battle, clearing the path to first production in 2025 at its Três Estradas phosphate project in southern Brazil. A lawsuit filed in 2021 by the Federal Public Prosecutors Office with the support of local ranchers sought to block a processing license that had been granted to the Aguia in 2019, following environmental approval.

Javelin Minerals has picked up the historic Eureka open pit north of Kalgoorlie where it is seeking to prove up a theory that more golden riches may be lurking nearby. The move follows the spectacular success of Spectrum Metals and Spartan Resources. Both found multi-million dollar gold deposits about 300m north of their mothballed open pits and Javelin already has some intriguing drill holes about 300m north of Eureka suggesting there is more gold out there.

Horizon Minerals is set to take over Poseidon Nickel and its mothballed mining plant with a $30m all-scrip deal that will give Horizon a neat opportunity to commercialise its myriad of gold deposits scattered around Kalgoorlie. Horizon is offering 0.1156 of its shares for each Poseidon share and aims to raise a minimum of $14 million via a two-tranche placement at 4.5c per share to bolster its balance sheet.

Image Resources has locked in a US$20 million offtake pre-payment from Shantou Natfort Zirconium and Titanium Co, its key Chinese heavy minerals concentrate partner. The deal will provide funding to support the construction of the company's 100%-owned Atlas mineral sands project, 170 kilometres north of Perth. Drawdown should occur in two tranches of US$10 million each in November and January.

Buxton Resources has nailed a record 124m drill hit at 16.6 per cent total graphitic carbon at its Graphite Bull project, 300km east of Carnarvon, WA. The hole, drilled as part of a 29-hole reverse circulation program, intersected the monster hit at a depth of just 44m and has extended the strike of Graphite Bull by an extra 240m outside the existing resource.