Public Company News

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.

K2fly has added another global miner to its stellar list of customers for its extraordinarily successful “RCubed” resource governance mining software. Mining giant Newmont has signed a three-year software provision deal with K2fly with a total contract value in excess of A$900,000. K2fly said customer interest was strong in Toronto recently at the world’s premier mineral exploration and mining convention, PDAC 2020 where the ASX-listed technology player showcased its software.

Novo Resources has acquired the joint venture interests of Artemis Resources to take control of 100 per cent of the Purdy’s Reward and 47K gold leases south of Karratha in WA’s East Pilbara. The two leases are located near the eastern end of Novo’s extensive North Pilbara conglomerate gold fairway and adjacent to Novo’s Comet well JV where it owns 80 per cent of the mineral rights.

Middle Island Resources has set upon an aggressive exploration and development program at its Sandstone gold project, with ongoing drilling identifying the first new significant gold anomaly within a stone’s throw of the existing processing plant. First pass air core drilling has found two separate, near-linear, gold zones that extend over some 600 metres and 300 metres, respectively.

St George Mining is gearing up to drill out a number of compelling new nickel targets at its Mt Alexander project in the Goldfields, some for the first time. A number of undrilled but compelling EM anomalies at the West End and Fish Hook prospects have been screaming to be drilled and have the potential to deliver greenfields discoveries according to St George.

AVZ Minerals is moving to lock in a binding offtake agreement with Yibin Tianyi after the Chinese lithium chemical player tipped an initial $1m into AVZ whilst the Foreign Investment Review Board runs the ruler over Yibin Tianyi’s intention to plough over $14m into AVZ. Tibin Tianyi is a star-studded Chinese partnership that involves some of the biggest industrial names in China.

Blackstone Minerals has racked up more long nickel sulphide intercepts at its King Cobra discovery in Vietnam with two near surface results returning 39m at 1.1per cent nickel and 28m grading 1.2 per cent nickel from its Ta Khoa Nickel-PGE project. One drill hole at King Cobra also intersected a 0.55m thick massive sulphide vein within a broader 58m intersection of disseminated nickel sulphide mineralisation.

After dusting off old maps and records from the Mines Department, Kingwest Resources has put together a lucrative looking exploration target at its Menzies gold project in WA that will be backed up with around 8,300 metres worth of drilling. Kingwest’s exploration targets have been developed at the Princess May, Lady Shenton and First Hit deposits and extrapolate out to a range of between 930K and 1.03M ounces of gold.