Matt Birney

The gold hits continue to roll in from Horizon Minerals’ Golden Ridge project near Kalgoorlie in the heart of Western Australia’s Goldfields. Results from the latest round of RC drilling have included 2 metres returning a tantalising 26.11 grams per tonne gold from 69m. The company appears to have also tapped into a nickel-rich ultramafic that lies only 8km north of the Blair nickel mine.

ASX-listed Askari Metals has turned up an encouraging 2 grams per tonne gold after sifting through the soils of its Burracoppin gold project in WA’s Wheatbelt region. The Burracoppin project was historically mined in the 1930s and in some old workings produced gold grades of up to 49 g/t gold. Askari is now redefining a prospective gold corridor that looks like it could be over 3km long.

American West Metals continues to deliver at its West Desert project in Utah after its third diamond drill hole intersected over 100 metres of visual zinc and copper mineralisation from just 20m downhole. According to the company, the initial results appear to confirm the continuity of shallow base metals in the first two holes and support the projects open pit mining potential.

Neometals has joined forces with a subsidiary of luxury vehicle juggernaut, Mercedes-Benz to design and construct a proposed lithium-ion battery recycling facility in Southern Germany. The collaboration will see Primobius, a joint venture partner of Neometals, team up with the car manufacturer’s subsidiary, LICULAR GmbH. According to the company, the pair are in ‘advanced discussions’ for the 2,500 tonne per annum plant.

ASX-listed K2fly has inked a $768,000 three-year contract with Freeport-McMoRan to provide its unique cloud-based “RCubed” mineral resource governance platform across all twelve of Freeport’s global operations. Freeport is the 16th client to use K2fly’s RCubed software that K2fly says is the only commercial solution of its type available anywhere in the world.

Trailblazing biotech Memphasys has achieved a crucial step in the rollout of its IVF sperm separation technology after winning a draft ISO for its quality management system for manufacturing medical devices. Memphasys said the ISO 13485 certificate will assist with selling medical devices in high regulatory markets such as Australia, Europe and China and it is an important step for product accreditation and acceptance by customers.

Image Resources has tabled a timely resource update on seven of the eight projects recently acquired in WA’s historic Eneabba mineral sands mining district, located 275km north of Perth. The total mineral resources for all seven stands at 199Mt grading 2.8 per cent THM with 5.5Mt of contained heavy minerals at 84 per cent VHM.

St George Mining has confirmed the potential to produce two commercially viable concentrates with metallurgical test work displaying nickel grades of 11.5 per cent with 3.32 grams per tonne palladium, 0.65 g/t platinum and 0.61 per cent cobalt and copper at 27.8 per cent with 12.4 g/t palladium, 1.9 g/t platinum and 2.6 g/t gold. Importantly no deleterious elements that could affect the saleability of the concentrates were identified.

ASX-listed Barton Gold has plenty of drill targets to go after in South Australia’s Gawler Craton after processing of gravity survey data has confirmed previously identified priority structural targets. The findings have corroborated the explorer’s geological understanding of the Tarcoola project and will assist in refining its targets for an upcoming drilling campaign.