Bulls N' Bears (Commercial Content)

ASX-listed Radiopharm Theranostics has joined forces with a renowned global radiopharmaceutical manufacturer to produce its cancer-fighting treatment that targets commonly over-expressed protein in human tumours. The company’s agreement with Canadian-based AtomVie Global Radiopharma has been cemented via Radiopharm Ventures – a joint venture it shares with the highly-regarded MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Texas in the United States.

With the antimony market booming and setting the share market alight, Bulls N' Bears has gone looking for the next critical metal shouting out for attention from new technologies – and it could be tungsten. Driven by demand in the industrial, renewables and defence sectors – and a shrinking supply – the alloy-hardening metal could soon join the chorus of critical minerals that are making all the noise.

Aurum Resources is on the cusp of becoming a bigger shark in the West African gold pond after circling fellow ASX-listed Mako Gold with an all-scrip bid at a whopping 112 per cent above the market price. Mako’s share price surged nearly 80 per cent on the back of the news that would create a major African gold explorer with cash reserves of AU$20 million.

Legend Mining is priming the drill bit for the Magnus prospect within at its Rockford project in WA after picking up four highly-conductive plates using its advanced high-powered fixed-loop electromagnetic survey. The most significant plate, with conductance measuring up to 5000 siemens, sits at the edge of a gravity anomaly and 550m below the deepest drilling to date, hinting at an undetected, but mineral-rich target.

Buxton Resources has unveiled high-grade iron rock chips from its Narryer project in WA’s Gascoyne region after reconnaissance sampling at its Stonehut magnetite prospect returned iron samples grading more than 41 per cent across a 2km strike. Assays included samples of up to 47.2 per cent iron, considered high-grade for magnetite, and the company will now launch follow-up programs to establish the prospect’s potential scale.

Lycaon Resources is a step closer to launching a maiden drill campaign at its fully-owned Stansmore polymetallic play in Western Australia’s prospective West Arunta region after locking in a drilling contractor for the work. The company has appointed Subiaco-based Topdrill just a day after confirming final heritage and works permit approvals, paving the way for it to begin drilling early next month.

Carnaby Resources has identified its undrilled San Quentin prospect as a new copper target, with rock-chip grades going up to 6.7 per cent at the Greater Duchess project it shares with Latitude 66 in Queensland. Sitting 2km to the south-east of the JV’s Nil Desperandum copper discovery near Mount Isa, management says San Quentin is showing 800m of outcropping mineralisation.

Quantum Graphite has extended its land grab at the Uley project in South Australia, increasing the ground area to 117 square kilometres at the site near the State’s historic fishing town of Port Lincoln. The company is on the hunt for deposits of flake graphite to supply the critical mineral into its Sunlands Power joint venture for conversion into thermal energy storage cells.

South Perth-based mining giant IGO has passed the $350,000 exploration expenditure threshold required for it to grab a 51 per cent slice of Buxton Resources’ promising Copper Wolf project in Arizona. And IGO can now continue on to grab another 19 per cent interest in the joint venture project it shares with Buxton by spending a further $5 million.

On a massive turnover of more than 105 million shares, White Cliff Minerals' stock surged more than eight per cent today after the company revealed multiple copper rock-chip samples grading more than 50 per cent from its Rae project in Canada’s Nunavut territory. The maiden field program confirmed large-scale, high-grade copper occurrences at both the company’s Rocket and Thor prospects.

Xanadu Mines has unveiled a prefeasibility study of biblical proportions at its Kharmagtai copper-gold project in Mongolia’s South Gobi Desert, including a pre-tax US$1.4 billion NPV, an IRR of 31 per cent at spot commodity prices and a mine life of nearly three decades. The study confirms the project’s potential as a globally-significant, low-cost, long-life mining operation.

In this edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some of the more notable drill intercepts revealed on the ASX, including African Gold’s 33m at 2.4g/t gold at its Didievi project in Cote d’Ivoire. We also take a close look at other interesting drill hits from last week as reported by Nexus Minerals and Great Southern Mining, both from WA’s Goldfields region.

Lycaon Resources has secured its final heritage and program of works approvals to clear the way for drilling at its multi-element Stansmore carbonatite project in Western Australia’s West Arunta region. The heritage clearance survey, which was completed in July, relates to the company’s three priority Stansmore, Volt and Ions targets where it is chasing niobium, rare earths and iron oxide copper-gold.

The European Central Bank, followed by the US Federal Reserve and then the Bank of China, have all confirmed that a new era of falling interest rates has arrived. Historically, small cap equity markets have consistently outperformed during times of monetary easing and these latest central bank moves suggest the period of small cap underperformance may be coming to an end.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears Runner of the Week is … lithium. The silvery-white metal is back in the headlines for all the right reasons, pumping the share prices of several companies, including Arcadium Lithium, which is at the centre of a takeover bid by Rio Tinto. Kali Metals also spiked on the lithium trend, while Rimfire Pacific Mining and Rhythm Biosciences also ran hard.

Global metals-trading giant Glencore has cast its eye across Estrella Resources’ manganese ground in Timor-Leste, where the latter has unveiled high-grade rock-chip assays hitting up to 57 per cent manganese at its Sica and Lalena prospects in the nation’s Lautém Municipality. The results, which highlight the high-grade nature of manganese mineralisation in the largely untapped region, have marked a major step forward for Estrella’s exploration.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining is spreading its exploration wings at its Pinjin project in WA to test new targets next to existing prospects in the southern part of the area’s prospective Laverton Tectonic Zone. The company has lined up air-core drilling at two targets named Kirgella East and Kirgella West, which are respectively centred 1200m north-east and north-west from its combined Kirgella Gift and Providence prospects.

With burgeoning expectations for a new lithium wave to soon appear on the horizon, Chariot Corporation – the biggest lithium landowner in the US – has made a strategy shift at its Black Mountain project in Wyoming to get ready for the ride. The plan is to take advantage of Wyoming’s unique mining regulations in order to scale a future mine in line with the lithium market.

Buxton Resources has secured heritage clearance to drill up to 10 holes at its 80sq-km Centurion project in Western Australia’s West Arunta region in its search for major iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) targets. The principal target is defined by partly-coincident magnetic and gravity geophysical anomalies spanning a surface area measuring about 3500m by 5000m and reporting a 1500 nanoTesla magnetic response and 10.1 milligal gravity response.

A $7 million American West Metals fundraising campaign, which has attracted new investors and the company’s directors, has helped build a war chest to boost exploration efforts and upgrade the resource estimate of its Storm copper project in Canada. Under the placement, 77.8 million new shares have been issued by the company at a price of 9c per share.

Suvo Strategic Minerals has turned nickel slag, the highly-polluting waste product of nickel pig iron production, into a high-strength, low-cost and low-carbon cement. Confirming positive laboratory testing that could revolutionise the centuries-old cement industry, the company says its recent trials in collaboration with Makassar State University in Indonesia achieved a compressive strength of 37.5 megapascals (MPa) after just seven days.

Aurumin has pocketed a cash boost of $500,000 for the sale to private company Newcam Minerals of an exclusive six-month option on the iron ore rights at its Central Sandstone gold project in WA. Newcam will conduct due diligence across the site that consists of three mining leases and it may lead to a JV agreement between the two parties, resulting in a further $500,000 payment.

Octava Minerals says it has locked in the relevant regulatory approvals required to begin exploration works at its high-grade Yallalong antimony project to the north-east of Geraldton in Western Australia. Geological fieldwork including mapping and rock-chip sampling is already underway as the company advances its activities towards the drill-testing of four high-priority targets along a vast 10km antimony corridor identified at the project.

Meeka Metals has confirmed its newly-acquired 750kW ball mill is now en route to its new home as a key component of the company’s expanded Murchison processing plant near Meekatharra in WA. The “Outokumpu” mill is slated to increase plant processing capacity to 640ktpa – a 30 per cent increase on the throughput of the 500kW mill that was included in a DFS in May.

De Grey Mining has invested $7 million to achieve its minimum first-stage spend at Novo Resources’ Egina gold project in Western Australia’s Pilbara region, with a further $18 million to be tipped in to create a joint venture operation. The earn-in is part of a required $25 million cash plunge within four years to create the 50:50 equal share at the site.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has revealed thick new gold intercepts that extend mineralisation to 2km of strike at the Wessex prospect within its Pinjin project, 140km north-east of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Results from a recent aircore campaign include 4m going 2.06g/t gold with 3m at 2.69g/t and hits of 4m at 2.37g/t and 4m at 1.72g/t within longer primary intercepts.

Fresh from delivering a feasibility study on its massive Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi, Lindian Resources has completed a successful North American roadshow to promote the project’s economic credentials and explore finance options. The company says it has fielded strong interest in helping it fund the first two stages of the operation and is in the process of reviewing potential partners.

Surefire Resources has confirmed it has secured clearance to launch an 11-hole, 2200m maiden drilling campaign at its recently-discovered Phat Boy copper prospect in Western Australia’s Mid West region. The prospective ground consists of four coincident copper-zinc anomalous zones and is interpreted to sit within a similar geological and structural setting to the world-class Golden Grove massive sulphide deposit.

Buru Energy’s hunt for onshore oil in Western Australia’s mighty Canning Basin has moved up a gear with the spudding of the Rafael Shallow 1 exploration well. The drilling is targeting the Rafael Shallow oil prospect where a prospective resource of between 3.2 million stock tank barrels (MMstb) of oil and 79 MMstb has already been identified, including a best estimate of 19 MMstb.

White Cliff Minerals has bolstered its funding for an upcoming drill program at its Rae copper-silver project in Canada, with a $5 million capital raise at a premium to the market price – cornerstoned by its strategic advisor, John Hancock. Management says the raising attracted widespread support from new and existing shareholders and institutional funds based locally and in the United Kingdom, United States and Europe.

Strickland Metals has landed a massive 545.7m drill hit grading 1.1 grams per tonne gold equivalent to create a northern resource extension of the Shanac deposit within its Rogozna gold and base metals project in Serbia. The intersection came from one of three recently-finished holes at site. Starting at 108m, it also included higher-grade sections of 102m at 1.7g/t and 30m at 2.4g/t.

In tough recent times for many junior mining companies on the ASX, luring a financially-powerful “big dog” onto the share register to provide some much-needed muscle has become a common boardroom pursuit. In this second part of an occasional series, Bulls N’ Bears takes a look at some of those companies which have prospered after jumping into the business bed with a major partner.