Public Company News

ASX-listed Conico has notched up a second successive round of sulphide hits as its drilling campaign motors on at the Ryberg project in Greenland. Downhole intervals of 45 metres, 32m and 27.8m of copper sulphide mineralisation have been encountered. The company believes the mineralised system is likely to be ‘fertile' at depth and is steaming ahead with further drilling and regional geophysics.

ASX-listed minerals technology player Neometals has hailed its latest vanadium recovery pilot plant test work a resounding success. The Perth-based company says the scaled-up pilot trials produced a consistently higher than 99.5 per cent-purity vanadium pentoxide product from the processing of about 14 tonnes of vanadium-bearing steel making by-product, with average recoveries exceeding 75 per cent.

ASX-listed junior explorer Askari Metals has kicked off an initial mapping and geochemical sampling program at its “heavily under-explored” Horry copper-gold project about 90km south-west of Halls Creek in WA's Kimberley region. The company says the Horry exploration licence area takes in a smattering of old copper and gold workings including the Western Lead gold mine and the Horry Horse and Leo copper-gold workings.

PolarX is making the most of the Alaskan summer and has already put a diamond drill rig on the ground at its high-grade Caribou Dome copper discovery north of Anchorage. The timely move into drilling has been prompted in part by the recent skyward move in the price of the lucrative red metal, which reached all-time highs of US$10,780 per tonne in early May.

Adriatic Metals has chalked up a high-grade, multi-metals hit from step-out diamond drilling at its proposed Vares silver-zinc-lead project development in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The company produced a cracking intersection near its keystone Rupice underground deposit at Vares of 21.1m at 296 g/t silver, 5.46 per cent zinc, 3.7 per cent lead, 1.22 g/t gold and 0.18 per cent copper from 338.6m depth.

ASX-listed gold developer, Classic Minerals has moved a step closer to full-scale gold production at its Kat Gap project near Southern Cross having turned the first sod in a trial mining operation. The company is targeting up to 1,000 ounces of gold initially from a bulk sample that will also provide important geological, engineering and metallurgical information prior to full-scale mining of its 93,000-ounce resource.

Bardoc Gold is crouched and ready to take that elusive leap from gold explorer to producer after the company locked in engineering group GR Engineering as preferred tenderer for the construction of a stand-alone gold processing plant at its namesake Bardoc project north of Kalgoorlie. The move follows hard on the heels of Bardoc initiating a “cash-flow optimisation” study on the multi-deposit gold project.

Torian Resources has picked up some encouraging gold sniffs from regional reconnaissance drilling at the Diorite Block section of its flagship Mt Stirling gold project about 40km north-west of Leonora in WA. The company's reverse circulation program across Diorite produced better intersections of 1m at 4.66 g/t gold from 109m at the “Unexpected Mine” prospect and 1m at 2.19 g/t from 8m at Diorite East.

Aldoro Resources has followed up its “hole in one” late last week with a second sulphidic drill hole from the company's Narndee base-metals project in WA. The company's second drill hole hit 11.2m of sulphide mineralisation, including 3.9m of the elusive massive sulphides from the southern strike extensions to its VC1 electromagnetic target. The company's maiden drill hole over the target delivered 2m of massive sulphides.

Hot on the heels of this week's earlier announcement that Glencore has agreed to pump A$14.4m into Hot Chili in return for a 9.99 per cent equity stake, Hot Chili has surprised the market with further news that it plans to raise $40 million to move to full ownership of its massive Cortadera copper-gold deposit. Hot Chili stock soared immediately by almost 20 per cent on the news.

King River Resources says it has uncovered new, potentially gold-bearing quartz veins following an initial rock chip sampling program across its Mt Remarkable regional tenement holdings in WA. The company says the epithermal quartz veining with indications of gold mineralisation – such as adularia, malachite and oxidised sulphides – was identified in five different areas on the back of 88 rock chip grab samples collected during the first-phase helicopter reconnaissance work.

Novo Resources continues to churn out record production numbers at its Nullagine gold operations in Western Australia's Pilbara, posting a massive 46 per cent increase above the June result. Revenue also surged 50 per cent over the previous month with 8,589 ounces of gold pumped out from the mill generating $19.2 million revenue. During the month the company also appointed Michael Spreadborough as its new executive co-chairman.