Public Company News

Local heavy rare earths developer, Northern Minerals, has sold its second shipment of the year to trading company, Thyssenkrupp, with 114 tonnes exported from Darwin and bound for separation facilities in China. Northern also sold 22 tonnes of heavy rare earth carbonate back in January this year from its pilot plant in north-eastern WA, signalling an increase in output from its Browns Range project.

Venus Metals has entered into a binding term sheet with ASX-listed eMetals for the sale of its Nardoo Hill lithium exploration tenement in WA’s Gascoyne region. Under the terms of the deal, Venus will receive $15,000 in cash, 25 million shares in eMetals priced at $0.014 cents per share and it will retain some upside to the project courtesy of a $0.50 cent per tonne royalty for any ore extracted from the tenement.

The total contract value of all current clients on the books at ASX-listed K2fly, utilising its “Infoscope” and “RCubed” mining software products is up 41 per cent quarter on quarter to over A$4.7 million. In a positive sign this week, mining giant and foundation K2fly client, AngloGold Ashanti, re-signed with K2fly for another three years with a total contract value in excess of A$240,000.

Buru Energy has received $1.9m cash for its share of the latest sale of crude oil from its Ungani oil field in Western Australia’s Canning basin. The sale rounds out a solid quarter of oil sales for Buru who previously predicted it would achieve $5.4m in oil sales for the March quarter – a prediction that is looking good despite the recent drop in oil prices.

After an aggressive exploration campaign across its Menzies and Goongarrie projects in WA, Kingwest Resources has now surpassed the 250,000-ounce milestone for near surface gold resources across the two project areas. 233,336 of those ounces are housed at the company’s jewel in the crown, the Menzies gold project with the previous combined shallow resource estimate across both projects jumping from 171,000 ounces.

Horizon Minerals has picked up a respectable $6M in a combined debt and equity that looks like it will be enough to see the ASX junior pour it first gold bar from the Boorara gold project near Kalgoorlie. As part of the package, Horizon made a $2M placement before costs at A$0.08c per share representing a 10% discount to its 15-day VWAP of $0.089c, an astounding effort in a terrible market.

Australian Potash has secured its first “take-or-pay” term sheet for the supply of 20,000 tonnes of “K-Brite” premium Sulphate of Potash fertiliser per annum from its Lake Wells project to massive Sydney-based chemicals and ingredients distributor, Redox who boasts sales of over A$700 million per annum. The binding term sheet runs for ten years and gives Redox exclusive distribution rights through Australia and New Zealand.

Perth-listed lithium developer, AVZ Minerals, has achieved an impressive average of 69% fine lithia recoveries from stage two metallurgical flotation test work at its giant Manono lithium and tin project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Elsewhere at the nearby Carriere de l’Este deposit, AVZ conducted initial test work and found randomly sampled high grade sections from diamond core that produced a 2.37% lithium oxide sample.

Venus Metals, along with its JV partner Rox Resources, has just finished flying an Xcite airborne electromagnetic survey, or “HEM” at its Penny West Deep South Project near Youanmi in WA that has identified what looks to be some compelling geophysical zones of interest along the prospective Youanmi shear zone. These zones have a higher electrical conductivity than the surrounding rocks, which may indicate that sulphide minerals are present at depth.

Spectrum Metals has followed up the highest grade drill results seen to date outside of its Penny North deposit in WA and made some further encouraging hits including 3 metres grading 9.62 grams per tonne and 2m grading 13.0g/t gold from its Magenta prospect. It looks as if the company may also be onto a new discovery with a “stratigraphic” hole at the Golden Hinde prospect returning 1m grading 54.9g/t gold from 77m downhole.

Fast-moving telco innovator Vonex, has been granted a US patent for its “Oper8tor” smart phone voice and messaging App, just as it completes third-party testing. Vonex said the patent validates the unique, cross-platform communication capability of the App and the upstart telco will now move to a closed user group for a review of the App’s stability and scalability ahead of the commercial roll-out of the product.

Alterra has tapped into the database, knowledge banks and networks of well-known Harvey avocado and citrus grower, Richard Eckersley. The parties have inked “Local Partner and Data Access” agreements that provide Alterra with access to the expert grower’s cropping data for 15 years and Eckersley will also act as something of a forward scout in the South West for Alterra who is on the hunt for investment grade crops.