Public Company News

Hot Chili has dished up a bumper-grade 144m intercept at 1 per cent copper-equivalent as it looks to grow the resource at the Cortadera deposit within its broader Costa Fuego copper hub in northern Chile. The company is eyeing a pre-feasibility study to fast-track Costa Fuego to production with the high-grade core at Cortadera to play a key part.

Wiluna Mining Corporation has wrapped up its US$42 million term loan from commodity trader Mercuria and says stage one sulphide gold expansion to more than 120,000 ounces per annum and feasibility study work on its next phase of growth are now fully funded. The FS on lifting annual output at Wiluna in WA past 240,000 ounces is expected to be completed this year.

Canada-focused Ardiden is set to shift its exploration efforts into higher gear at its Pickle Lake gold project in Ontario. The company is eyeing a maiden drilling campaign at the Esker prospect near Barrick Gold Corp's historical Golden Patricia gold mine which produced more than 600,000 ounces of gold. Previous drill intercepts at Esker include 12.03m at 3.2 grams per tonne gold.

AVZ Minerals has locked in a long-term lease over an industrial site earmarked as an integral logistics hub for the transfer of concentrate for export from its proposed Manono hard-rock lithium project in the DRC. The company says the Kabondo Dianda “intermodal staging station”, where the Manono concentrate will be trucked, forms part of its logistics plan to export finished products to global markets.

ASX-listed Estrella Resources has dished up a 22.85m intercept of nickel-copper sulphides above a previous hit that returned 20.1m going 1.04 per cent nickel at its T5 discovery north of Kalgoorlie in WA. Results from the current phase-three drilling campaign are due soon as the company continues to advance its geological understanding of the prospect ahead of the next stage of its exploration.

Queensland-focused Superior Resources has kicked off a significant new drilling program that will look to build on its gold resource base and follow up intriguing copper exploration signals at Greenvale in the state's north. Managing Director, Peter Hwang says the planned 8,000 metres of drilling is shaping up as a defining step for the company and its bold blueprint for a greater Greenvale gold-copper production hub.

CZR Resources has managed to punch its way through almost half the planned 5,000m reverse circulation drilling program being undertaken at its 85 per cent-owned Buddadoo gold project in WA despite heavy rain. The company recently completed 24 holes for 2,298m on the first of several priority prospects straddling the Salt Creek shear in its project area on the Gullewa greenstone belt.

Todd River Resources has outlined a three-kilometre-long nickel-copper target at its Berkshire Valley project, 150 kilometres north-east of Perth in Western Australia. Recent shallow aircore drilling, designed to test for mineralisation below the soil and alluvium that blankets the region, has consistently returned highly anomalous base metal values kicking as high as 4,800 parts per million copper and 4,000 ppm nickel.

South Australia gold explorer, Barton Gold is set to list its shares on the Australian Securities Exchange in a fortnight after receiving conditional ASX admission approval. It follows hot on the heels of the company's recently oversubscribed IPO that closed early and gave the company a $15 million war chest to unleash in SA's Gawler Craton.

Latitude Consolidated says it has unearthed a new auriferous trend near the former Andy Well underground mine at its Murchison gold project in WA's Murchison Goldfields. An initial set of drill results from the company's 10,000m phase-one RC program included an encouraging 7m grading an average 1.9 grams per tonne gold from 121m including 1m going at 9.59 g/t from the Suzie North prospect.

Legend Mining has returned further encouraging drill intersections from the Mawson nickel-copper-cobalt massive sulphide prospect within its Rockford project in WA's Fraser Range district. Best of the latest results are 3m at 1.04 per cent nickel, 0.61 per cent copper and 0.09 per cent cobalt from 181m and 1.7m at 1.48 per cent nickel, 1.12 per cent copper and 0.10 per cent cobalt from 456.4m.

Victory Mines has returned to drilling at the Coogee copper-gold discovery, near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. The company has launched into a 6,000-metre drilling program over the prospect as it looks to begin testing a large porphyry target with recent resampling returning 17 metres at 1 per cent copper and 1.98 grams per tonne gold from only 77m down-hole.