Matt Birney

Altech Chemicals has held a successful shareholders vote to approve a name change to Altech Batteries Limited to better reflect the company’s direction of “meeting a battery storage future”. The ASX ticker will remain ATC. Altech has three battery focused projects, Silumina lithium-ion battery anodes, Cerenergy- an alternative to grid storage batteries and a high-purity alumina project.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has identified gold and lithium anomalies in a first-pass 315 auger hole program at its wholly owned Pianto project 85km north of Kalgoorlie. The company says its campaign was targeting gold in granite and lithium pegmatites. The fresh gold anomalisms are along the southern margin of a fault-related northwest striking demagnetised zone. Outcropping pegmatites were also found at two locations near lithium anomalies in addition to minerals tentatively identified as spodumene.

Venus Metals has its drill bit spinning again, this time at its historical Bellchambers gold deposit, part of the company’s Sandstone project in the WA Goldfields. The campaign follows up a 2020 exploration program that delivered a substantial increase in Bellchambers’ JORC-compliant indicated mineral resource. The new work will target structurally controlled gold mineralisation and will test the depth continuation of mineralisation.

The JV between Everest Metals and Stelar Metals has wasted no time in declaring the duo’s Trident Project has potential to host economic quantities of Greenbushes-style lithium. Field work is set to start with drilling planned for mid-2023 at the NSW project covering over 750 square kilometres of tenements. The joint venture is researching geophysical techniques to identify those that can potentially map the size, shape and location of pegmatites at depth to optimise potential lithium drill targets.

Toro Energy has recommenced drilling at its Dusty nickel project after recording its thickest massive nickel sulphide intersection so far at the company’s Dimma prospect in the Yandal greenstone belt in WA. The diamond drilling program was restarted after the company completed three holes at the prospect last week that revealed a 4.5m intercept of continuous massive nickel sulphide from 194.3m downhole.

Meeka Metals has confirmed the presence of high-grade gold at its Circle Valley project near Esperance after assays from a diamond drilling campaign produced impressive results and hit gold in every hole. Late last year the company completed a five-hole diamond drilling program aiming to gather data and test a 1200m by 400m gold anomaly that was detected during a previous RC campaign.

Venus Metals Corporation’s partner in the East Greenbushes project, IGO Limited, has launched an exploration blitz on its site that sits adjacent to the world-renowned Greenbushes lithium mine. IGO is planning a geochemical survey specifically targeting lithium at the site and expects to take a total of 1350 soil samples at the operation in the South West region of WA.

ASX-listed Valor Resources has expanded its ground in the uranium rich Saskatchewan area in Canada, expanding its Surprise Creek tenure by 20 square kilometres. One of the new tenements comes with a historical showing of 1.2 per cent copper. Despite both new additions being highly prospective for uranium and copper, very little modern exploration has been completed since the 1980s.

Venus Metals has launched an RC drilling program at new targets at its wholly owned Youanmi lithium project in WA’s Murchison region, about 480km north-east of Perth. The drilling will test recently identified lithium anomalies in soil samples and rock chips for pegmatite-hosted lithium-caesium-tantalum mineralisation in the bedrock. The rock chips returned up to 2.11 per cent lithium oxide.