Bulls N' Bears (Commercial Content)

Hot Chili expects a VAT tax refund payment of up to $4 million this year against all expenditure associated with its Cortadera copper-gold discovery, the centrepiece of its overarching Costa Fuego porphyry copper-gold project in Chile. Hot Chili says the VAT refund was given the nod by the Chilean Government and the tax refunds will shore up the company’s cash position as it gradually moves to full ownership of Cortadera.

Venture Minerals is poised to ride the crest of the monster iron ore price wave as it counts down to the start of iron ore production at its revived Riley mine in north-west Tasmania. The company has just raised $10 million and has been busy getting its ducks in a row for the main construction phase push at the Riley project development site including the critical wet screening plant.

ASX-listed Eclipse Metals has vectored in on a large circular magnetic anomaly containing multiple conductive exploration targets on its ground just a kilometre or two east of its recently acquired Ivittuut cryolite mine in southern Greenland. Eclipse is targeting cryolite, rare earth elements, high-purity silica and even nickel sulphides as it continues to explore its tenement in the frozen north.

Australian Bauxite appears to have added a second string to its bow with the company encountering intriguing levels of rare earth elements at its Tasmanian and Queensland bauxite projects that it describes as “potentially game changing”. Initial results from exploration undertaken over the past 15 months returned encouraging hits of rare earth elements at the Binjour bauxite deposit within its Sunrise project 115km south-west of the Bundaberg port and at the DL130 prospect in north-east Tasmania.

Comet Resources has rattled the tin and raised a million dollars from sophisticated and institutional investors. The cash injection will largely go towards funding an expansion of exploration activities at its historic Barraba copper project in the New England Fold Belt region of NSW. Recent geochemical sampling results at the project included up to 4.6 per cent copper, 4.0 per cent zinc and 0.7 per cent cobalt.

Indiana Resources has uncovered an historic gold assay that has laid dormant in the annals of the South Australian mineral core library for nearly six years without anybody actioning it. Indiana’s decision to re-examine historic core held by the South Australian Government could lead to a golden pay off after wide mineralised intersections were observed in a historic drill hole.

TNT Mines has nailed its first drill program at the Eureka gold project 50 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie after it hit 34 metres at 1.75 grams per tonne gold in one drill hole. The company has moved quickly to test the potential of the Eureka gold project after it reached an agreement to acquire 100 per cent of Warriedar Mining, the previous owner of the project back in October 2020.

ASX-listed Blue Star Helium’s US helium development hopes have been given a massive lift on the back of a 175 per cent increase in combined potential resources to 9.6 billion cubic feet across five prospects at its Las Animas helium project in Colorado. The additional 6.1 billion cubic feet in “2U/P50 unrisked prospective” helium resources came from Blue Star’s newly assessed Galactica, Pegasus and Argo prospects.

Hot Chili is poised to take full ownership of the immense Costa Fuego project in northern Chile, following the early payment of an additional US$10 million to the vendors of the Cortadera discovery, SCM Carola. The company has delivered a total of US$17 million to the private Chilean group, with a final payment of US$15 million now due on or before the middle of July 2022.

Ora Banda Mining has made good on its promise to breathe new life into the old Davyhurst gold operation about 120 kilometres north-west of Kalgoorlie after producing its first gold bar at the new-look operation. Davyhurst is a very different operation with a very different resource profile to the operation that once impaled Eastern Goldfields who slipped into administration with the project.

Si6 Metals has followed up historic drilling at its Maibele Project in Botswana, with new results successfully expanding a sulphide-hosting horizon identified back in 2014 by more than 60 metres. The company has returned to the Maibele after seven years and looks set to write its own chapter in the history of exploration at the project.

Aspiring Balkans multi-metals project developer, Adriatic Metals has secured a key regulatory approval for its Vares silver-zinc-lead project in Bosnia and Herzegovina that nudges it further along the pathway towards production start-up, expected to be later this year. The Bosnia and Herzegovina Government approved Adriatic’s application for an environmental permit covering the project’s Rupice deposit following an environmental impact assessment.

After a COVID-19 related delay, Native Mineral Resources is set to hit the ground running next month as it chases a range of gold targets at its Music Well gold project in the world-class Yilgarn Craton region in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields. Field work is set to include detailed geological mapping and sampling to assess the gold endowment of various prospect areas.

TSXV-listed Novo Resources has made its final payment of A$3 million in cash and issued 1,198,395 shares to the vendor to wrap up its acquisition of the Comet Well project in the Karratha region of Western Australia. The Comet Well deal comes just as Novo starts to pull dirt from its Beatons Creek gold deposit that it is looking to treat at its newly refurbished Golden Eagle plant south-east of Nullagine.

ASX-listed Aurora Labs has succeeded in upgrading the fume extraction capability of its flagship RMP-1 prototype 3D printer, maintaining its competitive performance edge in the rapidly developing 3D printing market. Importantly, the company says it has done so without any reduction in print quality. Aurora said the fume extraction upgrade which was delivered on time and budget is part of its 12-month development pathway.

AVZ Minerals is set to expand its lithium resource at its Manono project in the DRC with drilling below the current pit floor delivering an incredible 279.2 metre intercept grading 1.45 per cent lithium oxide from only 24.06m down-hole. With lithium companies currently enjoying a resurgence, AVZ continues to show that it may well have the biggest and best undeveloped lithium deposit in the world today.

PolarX is edging closer to the development of its copper-gold deposits in Alaska, with results from its recent drilling campaign at the Zackly skarn discovery highlighting the potential of the project and triggering the planning of a scoping study. The new study will include metallurgical test work and an economic evaluation of the metal-rich assets in the mountains of the northern US state.

Further metallurgical test work on Lindian Resources’ high-grade sample ores from its Bouba conglomerate bauxite deposit in Guinea has come up trumps again. The company says digestion test work following up on recent positive results from dry screening of the Bouba ores showed they were suited to both low temperature and high temperature digestion settings in Bayer process alumina refineries.

Iron ore monolith, Rio Tinto has signed up to a 3-year software-as-a-service contract with ASX-listed tech player, K2fly. Rio will make use of K2fly’s Infoscope software platform to manage very sensitive heritage information across its iron ore mining operations in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. K2fly said the total contract value for the deal with Rio was set at A$719,000.

Novo Resources is poised to join the growing ranks of WA’s gold producers having received its final approvals from the state government for the commencement of operations at its Golden Eagle plant south-east of Nullagine. Mining has already commenced at the nearby Beatons Creek deposits and with the commissioning of the operation now underway, the company is preparing for its much-anticipated maiden gold pour.

Blackstone has hit massive sulphide vein mineralisation in multiple drill holes at its King Snake nickel prospect in Vietnam while vectoring in on several high-priority electromagnetic targets, or EM plates, across the company’s developing Ta Khoa Nickel project in Vietnam. Blackstone’s KS20-02 diamond core drill hole tagged 9.4 metres of sulphide mineralisation, including 1.18m of a massive sulphide vein.

ASX-listed gold and copper explorer, White Cliff Minerals has identified several high-priority gold targets at its historic Reedy South gold project in WA after completing a significant aeromagnetic survey flown across the entire Reedy South tenement package. The company says the aeromagnetic survey was commissioned in order to improve its understanding of what may be going on under the soil cover at Reedy South.

ASX-listed Horizon Minerals has shuffled its Kalgoorlie based tenement portfolio around and it appears to have come out with a few trump cards as the company pushes ahead with its regional consolidation strategy, focusing on WA’s rich Goldfields region. Horizon said its slew of recent deals is value-accretive for the company.

Native Mineral Resources has expanded its Palmerville copper-gold project in north Queensland following the grant of an additional exploration licence on the eastern margins of its tenement holding in the region that hosts the recent Leane’s copper discovery. The company now holds over 1,820 square kilometres of the mineral-rich Chillagoe Formation which hosts the nearby Mungana, Red Dome and Griffith’s deposits.

Venus Metals and joint venture partner, Rox Resources, have posted an outstanding set of metallurgical results from the Grace gold discovery in WA. First-pass, bench-scale test work on bulk samples from the discovery at Youanmi has returned stellar recoveries of up to 99.8 per cent of the contained gold in fresh rock samples.

Lithium Australia’s application for a US patent for one of its proprietary lithium extraction technologies, SiLeach, has been approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The Perth-based company also received a notice of acceptance from IP Australia for the same patent application, which is expected to be granted at the end of April.

Sure-footed East Pilbara gold developer, Calidus Resources has inked a farm-in deal to acquire up to 90 per cent of fresh ground, 20km east of its Blue Spec gold project, by spending up to $800k on exploration over six years. Calidus said the highly promising tenement is littered with soil geochemical anomalies and immediately east of a mineralised corridor identified by Novo Resources.

Comet Resources has unearthed samples bearing visible, fine gold at its high-grade Santa Teresa project in Mexico. Detailed geological mapping and sampling through the historic mine area has also identified a raft of previously unrecognised structures hosting gold-rich quartz veins that remain untested by drilling. The permitting is now well advanced and the company expects to kick off resource drilling in the coming months.

Godolphin Resources has unveiled a revised mineral resource estimate for its historic Lewis Ponds polymetallic project in NSW’s Lachlan Fold Belt region and kicked off a major drilling campaign in and around the resource area. The resource now stands at 6.2 million tonnes of ore grading 2.0 g/t gold, 80 g/t silver, 2.7 per cent zinc, 1.6 per cent lead and 0.2 per cent copper.

Smart tech healthcare developer, InteliCare has clinched a five-year master supply agreement with Optus Networks that paves the way for Optus to pitch InteliCare’s smart monitoring systems to its health and aged-care sector clients. InteliCare’s system learns the daily behavioural patterns of the sick and the elderly and reports back to family or a healthcare professional if there is a departure from normal behaviour.

PolarX has tabled a treasure trove of high-grade gold and silver results from the first-pass sampling program at its Humboldt Range project in the western United States, with several samples returning assays grading over an ounce to the tonne gold. They include assays of 37.7 grams per tonne gold, 31.2 g/t gold and a stunning 1590 g/t silver.

Todd River Resources has hit the ground running with exploration over its Berkshire Valley project north of Perth defining anomalous nickel, copper and PGE mineralisation over more than 8 kilometres of strike. Recent geophysics have also added some more colour to the picture, with moving loop electromagnetics detecting an anomaly associated with a key geochemical target.