Bulls N' Bears (Commercial Content)

Rock chips from Askari Metals’ 100 per cent-owned Barrow Creek rare earths and lithium project in Australia’s Northern Territory have come back as high as 11,610 parts per million total rare earth oxides (TREO). Other rock chips assayed at 2507ppm and 2446ppm TREO, correlating with historic rock chips that went as high as 4553ppm, 2143ppm, 1243ppm, 1235ppm and 1091ppm TREO.

Gold Mountain’s stream sediment sampling has identified anomalous lithium in four of its five Juremal licences in Brazil and has defined targets for follow-up soil sampling to home in on the sources of the anomalies. The company says the three best stream targets are associated with west-flowing tributaries originating at or beyond the eastern boundaries of its easternmost block of licences.

Quantum Graphite has outlined an internal rate of return of almost 50 per cent and a net present value of more than $497 million following a financial update of its Uley 2 graphite project in South Australia. The independent assessment identified that doubling the mill throughput up to 1.2 million tonnes a year would lift production up to 100,000 dry metric tonnes of flake graphite.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears profiled ASX runner is … Compumedics. Its shares more than doubled this week to join fellow movers and shakers in Alterity Therapeutics, Lanthanein Resources and Global Oil & Gas.

Xanadu Mines has tabled a staggering resource estimate upgrade for its Kharmagtai copper-gold project in Mongolia, jumping to 1.3 billion tonnes with 3.4 million tonnes of contained copper and 8.5 million gold ounces. The updated estimate represents a 12 per cent increase in tonnes, a 15 per cent surge in contained copper and a 9 per cent jump in contained gold.

Meeka Metals has bolstered the 685,000-ounce resource at 2 grams per tonne gold at its Turnberry deposit in Western Australia’s Murchison region after delivering another round of high-grade oxide gold from 18 holes of infill drilling. The company is now pushing hard to finalise its development-ready status for next year in order to kick off mining.

A GreenTech Metals rock-chip sampling campaign has nailed new lithium hits along an east-west-trending, 2.5km-long pegmatite zone at its Kobe trend in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, with the best results ranging from 1.01 to 2.31 per cent lithium oxide. The company says the results demonstrate the local persistence of high-grade lithium along the western part of the Kobe trend.

Legend Mining’s mission to conquer WA’s mighty – but patience-testing – Fraser Range has taken a positive new twist, with geophysical data defining three conductors possibly related to nickel and copper. The conductors, identified during a maiden high-power fixed loop electromagnetics survey over the company’s entire “Octagonal” intrusive complex in the past three months, have positive drill intercepts with visual sulphide mineralisation identified in core.

Recent RC drilling at Kalgoorlie Gold Mining’s Providence prospect in Western Australia’s Goldfields region has turned up promising gold grades from just 20m depth, with broad runs of lower, but supportive grades prompting thoughts of open-pit mining. Management says the similarity of mineralisation to its adjacent Kirgella Gift prospect – and a possible plunge intersection between the two plots – may provide thicker or higher-grade zones.

Galan Lithium is on schedule for initial production at its Hombre Muerto West lithium project in Argentina by the first half of 2025, with construction of its first evaporation pond now 65 per cent complete. Pond liners have arrived on-site and installation is set to begin this month, ahead of filling the pools in next year’s first quarter.

St George Mining has delivered what it says are “groundbreaking” clay-hosted rare earths grading up to a huge 5125ppm TREO in the company’s first drilling foray into its Destiny project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. Highlights from the company’s maiden 61-hole AC program at Destiny include 30m at 1885ppm TREO and 399ppm magnetic rare earth oxides (MREO) from 20m.

Surefire Resources has unveiled a pre-tax net present value of $1.7 billion for its Victory Bore vanadium project in WA’s Mid West region following the release of a prefeasibility study into the operation. The company is predicting a 42.2 per cent pre-tax internal rate of return, a mine life of 24 years with a payback of 2.4 years and a capital cost of $767 million.

Horizon Minerals has extended deep gold mineralisation under its Penny West mine in Western Australia’s Goldfields region and it will be just one of several targets dripping with the yellow metal that the company will further explore next year. Management has also proven two distinct gold mineralisation styles at Kanowna South and intersected supergene gold up to 10g/t at Binduli.

Si6 Metals’ wait for new assays from drilling at its Maibele North prospect in Botswana has stepped up a notch in intensity after core and rock chips revealed strong visual copper and nickel sulphide mineralisation. The company says it has seen pentlandite, chalcopyrite and pyrrhotite sulphide concentrations – which are indicators of nickel-copper-platinum group elements mineralisation – at the prospect near the Zimbabwe border.

Estrella Resources has secured a prized position in what is emerging as a new mineral frontier after the Timor-Leste Government granted the company three highly-prospective new mining concessions. The acquisition of the concessions gives the company access to an area of 121.5 square kilometres in a region known to host more than 200 mineral occurrences including gold, copper, manganese, silver and chromite.

Empire Energy has ramped up its Carpentaria gas pilot project in the Northern Territory by acquiring AGL’s fit-for-purpose, 42-terajoule per day Rosalind Park gas plant for $2.5 million in cash. The company says the facility exceeds the standards set by its technical due diligence process and estimates the acquisition will shave a year off its pilot plant timeline and save it more than $30 million.

Horizon Minerals has revealed details about its pathway to gold production and a longer-term project pipeline relating to four of the company’s extensive suite of projects, mostly within about 35kms of Kalgoorlie. The details provide a snapshot on the company’s ramp-up work, including bringing on the underground operations at Cannon and Penny’s Find and its open-pit developments at Kalpini and Boorara.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears profiled ASX runner is… Plenti Group. Its shares more than doubled this week to join fellow runners Intelicare, Euro Manganese and LBT Innovations.

Gold Mountain has applied for 57 exploration licences enclosing more than 100,000 hectares of rare earths terrain in Brazil ¬– and the ground sits right next to a major inferred 510.3-million-tonnes-resource. The company’s new “Down Under” project in the State of Bahia is partly contiguous with Brazilian Rare Earths’ tenure and a resource with an overall grade of 1513ppm total rare earth oxides.

Lindian Resources is assessing a low-cost trial mining campaign planned for early next year at its Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi, while a process plant tender package is also being finalised. Mined material will be stockpiled, with the results of the trial set to be used to assess drill and blast fragmentation requirements, in addition to material handling productivity.

The first $4.7 million chapter has been written in Auric Mining’s remarkable money story at its humble Jeffreys Find gold mine near Norseman in Western Australia that many others would have ignored. Auric has produced more than 9700 ounces during two mining campaigns with joint venture partner BML Ventures, returning a total gold revenue of $29.28 million for the first stage of the two-year project.

Twigger’s Tales (Aka Argonaut’s deputy chair Liam Twigger) talks about the academic thrashing given to the methodologies used by the institution that many have used to make multi-million-dollar investments in far flung mining jurisdictions. He poses the question – who should we believe when assessing “in-country” jurisdictional risk when investing?

Strickland Metals says it has stretched its Marwari gold discovery by 400m to establish a total strike length of 1.1km following a systematic drilling campaign within its Yandal East project in Western Australia. And the company says its geophysical modelling has identified a further six promising “lookalike” targets in close proximity to the Marwari and Chetak deposits in the State’s Western Desert.

Horizon Minerals has set off on a lithium hunt through its gold-bearing Western Australian tenements after generating new exploration targets in the Goldfields and near the world-renowned Greenbushes project in the State’s South West region. The company says it has been encouraged by its results to date, but more work is now planned as it looks to broaden its operations.

Venture Minerals has produced what it says are exceptional assays of up to almost 7400 parts per million total rare earth oxides in a maiden 25-hole RC drilling program at its new Jupiter target in Western Australia’s Mid West region. Results reveal a remarkable consistency in multiple intercepts of between 12m and 32m thick and ranging on average between 2000ppm and 2500ppm TREO.

Galan Lithium says it has received several partnership approaches for offtake and strategic financing for the second-phase development of its Hombre Muerto West lithium brine project in Argentina. The interest follows a phase-one offtake and financing agreement with mining giant Glencore, with management saying the volume of direct enquiries highlights the strength of the long-term lithium market.

GreenTech Metals has revealed West Pilbara pegmatite intersections up to 24.6m thick in a maiden diamond drillhole that reached down to 810.2m at its Osborne joint venture lithium project … with more holes still to come. The company believes its highlight hit from 674m downhole could represent a down-dip extension of a mapped pegmatite at surface.

White Cliff Minerals believes its Lake Johnston South project is highly-prospective for spodumene-bearing pegmatites following a review into the operation west of Norseman in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. Lake Johnston South consists of 13 exploration licenses totalling 1874 square kilometres adjacent to and along strike from recent large-scale discoveries of spodumene-bearing pegmatites by Charger Metals and TG Metals.

Bookbuilds and Banter with Boz (aka Shaw and Partner’s WA State manager Davide Bosio) takes an early dive into the Christmas spirit to look into the annual ASX market phenomenon known as the “Santa rally” – and why this year’s renewal might just be the present investors have been hoping to unwrap.

Image Resources is cashed-up and charging towards the next phase of its life as a mining company after today pocketing $22 million from the final shipment of mineral sands from its Boonanarring project in Western Australia. The company says its coffers have been boosted to about $50 million and it is preparing to use the funds on a basket of highly-prospective projects.

The State Government has thrown its financial grunt in behind Infinity Mining’s diamond drilling program at the company’s Tambourah South lithium project, with a $149,675 Exploration Incentive Scheme grant. Infinity will fund the balance of the $299,350 program, which will see the drilling of two NQ-diameter diamond holes to depths of up to 300m to evaluate the geology under the project’s pegmatite swarm.

Lithium Universe is stepping closer to launching a definitive feasibility study on its Apollo project in Canada after expediting the engineering design for its 1-million-tonne per year lithium processing hub’s stand-alone concentrator. The plant is designed for an assumed feed grade of 1.1 per cent lithium oxide, with the output expected to be about 140,000 tonnes per annum of spodumene concentrate grading 5.5 per cent.