Public Company News

Neometals says vanadium recovery from its Perth pilot plant has reached steady-state production. Successful completion of the pilot campaign will support the technical feasibility of the company's proprietary process at scale and generate data that will be fed into a definitive feasibility study. Its pilot plant trial will process about 13 tonnes of vanadium-bearing steel by-product from three Scandinavian sites over 22 days.

Valor Resources has continued to build its portfolio in the Americas, pegging 14 new mining concessions around its Picha copper-silver project in southern Peru. The staking spree comes in the wake of recent channel sampling that produced grades up to 6.04 per cent copper and 18 ounces to the tonne silver, pointing to the potential of the underlying mineral system.

Kairos Minerals is moving closer to the coveted one-million-ounce resource threshold at the Mt York gold project in Western Australia's Pilbara region. The company has launched a 20,000m reverse circulation drilling campaign with the aim to convert a newly defined exploration target into ounces that can be added to the project's existing 873,000 ounce resource base.

Classic Minerals has taken a key step in moving its Kat Gap gold project in Western Australia to full production by securing approvals for trial mining of the deposit. The trial operation will enable the company to fine-tune the processing plant and generate metallurgical, engineering and geological information to optimise production and improve project economics ahead of full-scale mining.

Further investigation of ground that may cover an extension of the rocks that host the world's largest spodumene lithium mine is now in prospect for Galan Lithium after the company reported positive indicators from a site visit to its Greenbushes South property in WA's south-west.

Anglo Australian Resources has received a final payment from AuKing Mining for a 25 per cent stake in a joint venture covering base metals at its Koongie Park project about 20km south-west of Halls Creek in WA's eastern Kimberley region. Anglo Australian retains the right to explore for and develop gold and other precious metals deposits within the Koongie Park project area.

Impact Minerals is off and racing in its WA nickel hunt, with the company identifying a wealth of targets across the state's prospective South West Mineral Field and launching into an extensive program of surface sampling at its key projects. Impact controls over 1,900sq.km of ground between Northam and Corrigin, east of Perth, said to host a number of Julimar-style nickel-PGE targets.

Leading ASX-listed pure helium play, Blue Star Helium continues to expand its landholding around one of the world's highest-grade helium producing fields in Colorado, USA, ahead of its planned drilling start in the next quarter. The company has now more than doubled its tenure near the old Model Dome helium field in the past 12 months with its latest addition of nearly 33,000 net acres.

Novo Resources has upped the ante at its Beatons Creek gold mine near Nullagine in WA's Pilbara region, with the Nullagine operation pushing out more than 5,000 ounces of gold in May. Interestingly, over 60 per cent of the gold recovered in the plant comes via the nuggets and coarse gold captured in the gravity circuit from the company's conglomerate ores.

Comet Resources has hit the ground running in northern Mexico with a drill rig already pushing out diamond core from the company's Santa Teresa gold project. The company has designed more than 2,000 metres of diamond drilling to test the historical mining area, with exploration targeting a mass of quartz veins and stockworks which have previously returned assays of more than 950 g/t gold.

ASX-listed junior explorer, Strickland Metals has picked up a strategic slice of the revered Yandal greenstone belt in WA that complements its flagship Horse Well gold project immediately to the north. The Perth-based company acquired a 75 per cent interest in a cluster of exploration licences making up the Yandal East gold project from Renegade Exploration for a mix of shares and cash.

Coda Minerals looks to have unearthed a new IOCG discovery at Emmie Bluff in South Australia. The company's maiden drill hole has bulls-eyed over 200 metres of intense hematitic and sulphidic alteration suggesting that Coda may now be probing a massive mineralised system, sending the company's share price skyrocketing, up by more than 235 per cent in daily trade.