Matt Birney

ASX-listed rare earth’s producer, Northern Minerals, looks to be potentially onto something in the East Kimberly with some solid results from rock chip sampling, grading up to 2.92% copper at its John Galt Project, located 200 kilometres south of Kununurra in WA. The rock chip sampling program covered an area of 2 kilometres by 500 metres with half of all samples returning high copper grades of 1% or greater.

ASX-listed mineral sands miner, Image Resources, has capped a successful first year of operations at its zircon-rich, Boonanarring mineral sands mine in WA, with the company reporting that it has easily met its 2019 production and sales targets and is now upwardly revising its heavy mineral concentrate production estimates for 2020. Image’s commissioning of its mineral sands mine in WA was almost text book perfect last year, coming in on time and on budget with no major setbacks.

ASX listed biotech, PharmAust, has been awarded a one-year extension to its contract with not for profit organization, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, which commemorates the 12th-year of association between the two parties. Under the contract, which is expected to bring in $1.24m in revenue, PharmAust’s subsidiary, Epichem, will provide synthetic and medicinal chemistry services focused on developing new treatments for neglected diseases.

Medicinal cannabis player, MGC Pharmaceuticals, has unveiled a new medicinal cannabis-based line for Australian and New Zealand markets to be called “Mercury Pharma” with its first product, Mercury Pharma 100, a prescription-only 100mg/mL cannabidiol product. The company has received purchase orders for over 2,000 product units already, which will see revenues of around $270,000 realised.

Lithium Australia, through one of its wholly-owned subsidiaries, VSPC, has signed a potentially lucrative agreement with major Chinese chemical manufacturer, Beijing Saideli Technology, that will see the Perth based company progress the commercialisation of its battery cathode technology. The plan is to hit the downstream lithium-ion supply chain, collaborating on an international scale to commercialise VSPC’s cathode technology.

Alterra has appointed John McGlue to its advisory board as it gears up to enter the potentially lucrative agricultural sector with an initial focus on the avocado market. McGlue brings over 30 years of experience in corporate communications and financial markets to Alterra and he is the founder and Principal of corporate advisory firm, Castle Gates Australia. Alterra provides a co-investment model as a potential vehicle for farmers to diversify their conventional bank funding models.

Metallurgist and mining executive, Marc Ducler, has taken the helm at Anglo Australian Resources whilst experienced mining lawman, Leigh Warnick, has been appointed Chairman. John Jones, Peter Stern and David Varcoe will remain on the board as part of a pre-Xmas peace deal that saw the warring parties place their batton’s back in their knapsacks and appoint the largely independent team of Ducler and Warnick to spearhead the company.

The Davyhurst gold project has gifted Ora Banda Mining a grab bag of impressive drill results for Xmas with the first being a stunning 19-metre intersection grading 24.5 grams per tonne gold from 63 metres downhole. The new intersection includes a 6.4-metre zone grading well over 2 ounces to the tonne at 71.6 g/t. Davyhurst looks well set to ride again under a reconstituted Ora Banda Mining.

Hammer Metals has ploughed in 123 first-pass aircore holes at its Bronzewing South gold project and the company appears to have hit on what looks to be something quite interesting. Hammer recently reported composited sample assays from across Target 1 and it has since split the samples down to one-metre intervals. Best numbers include 14 metres at 1.80 g/t gold from 12 metres including 3 metres at 5.57 g/t.