Public Company News

Despite recent unseasonal WA weather, White Cliff Minerals has showered assay labs with about 1000 soil samples from its Diemals lithium and rare earths play east of Perth and Reedy South gold project in the historic Cue goldfields region. The company plans to keep up the momentum with more than 700 samples expected from its Yinnetharra lithium rare earths project in the coming weeks.

Valor Resources has identified highly prospective copper and uranium targets during a review of historical data from its Surprise Creek project in Canada's Athabasca Basin. Based on the copper results alone, including rock-chip samples between 0.25 and 5.9 per cent and soil samples up to 3300 parts per million, the company has extended its tenements by 11 square kilometres to the south-west.

Aruma Resources has added almost 300 square kilometres of prospective central WA gold acreage to its exploration portfolio with the pegging of the greenfields Carter Well project, east of the historical Mt Magnet mining town in WA's Murchison region. The company plans on getting boots on the ground as soon as regulatory approval has been granted.

Toro Energy has recorded its third discovery of massive and semi-massive nickel sulphides at its Dusty nickel project in WA, taking the prospective strike length at the site to at least 7.5km. The latest discovery, named Jumping Jack, was from a 3.4m intersection from 240.3m including a 1.4m- thick lens of massive nickel sulphides. The Dusty project falls within Toro's wholly owned Yandal gold project in WA's north-eastern Goldfields.

Meeka Gold could add more scale to its million-ounce-plus resource at the company's Murchison project in Western Australia. Diamond drilling at its Turnberry deposit has delivered a slew of new high-grade gold intercepts including 1m going 62.8 grams to the tonne gold and a wide 51m strike grading 1.64 g/t gold from 264m. The impressive results are from outside the area of a planned open-pit mine, underlining the project's growth potential.

Wiluna Mining Corporation's concurrent discovery, resource development and grade control drilling programs have delivered high-grade sulphide gold intersections around current mining areas and new targets across the company's mining operation in WA's Mid West region. The onslaught of drilling is expected to translate into inventory growth and increased confidence in production forecasts for both volume and grade up until the end of next year.

Estrella Resources has recorded a 17m intersection of semi-massive to disseminated nickel-copper sulphides at its Broonhill deposit, part of the company's Carr Boyd nickel-copper project near Kalgoorlie, in WA. The company says results show Broonhill remains open along strike, is increasing in scale and a separate deposit to the T5 mineralisation 1.5km to the south.

Godolphin Resources' JV partner, Orange Minerals is poised to fire up the diamond drill rig for 1200m of exploration at its Calarie gold project in the Lachlan Fold Belt of NSW after finalising plans for a phase 2 probe. The campaign follows a December RC campaign that delivered a suite of “outstanding” intercepts, including 1m at 48.77 grams per tonne gold from 42m.

Junior explorer PolarX has hit a 9.1m intersection running a stellar 124 g/t gold from a shallow 27.4m in its maiden RC drilling campaign at the company's Humboldt Range project in Nevada. The stellar intersection contained an exceptionally high-grade zone of 3m at 371 g/t gold and 143.5 g/t silver with the same hole going on to deliver another 73.2m going 0.28 g/t gold and ending in mineralisation.

Metallurgical testing using a high-pH caustic pre-treating process on Sihayo Gold's starter project in North Sumatra has the explorer pointing towards a significantly better cashflow than forecast. The company says back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest the improved gold recoveries could lift the life-of-mine pre-tax cashflows more than 75 per cent.

Coda Minerals has received encouraging metallurgical test results showing exceptional recoveries above 99 per cent from a concentrate sample taken at its Emmie Bluff copper-cobalt deposit in South Australia. The company says the results show the potential for lower-cost on-site production of high-value goods from Coda's Elizabeth Creek copper project, including the Emmie deposit, that can be sold into the electric vehicle and battery markets.

Altech Chemicals has executed a framework agreement with Fraunhofer IKTS to accelerate the testing and qualification process for its battery-boosting Silumina Anodes product. The company is looking to lather the silicone and graphite-infused substance over lithium-ion batteries to deliver battery anodes with a 30 per cent higher retention capacity over non-coated items.