Michael Busbridge

Aguia Resources says a new operating plan at its Santa Barbara gold mine in Colombia is starting to show through, with December batch processing lifting recoveries to about 70% and triggering expected gold sales of about $120,000. The company has cut headcount by more than half and is targeting recoveries above 80 per cent as it steadies production and lines up exploration drilling in 2026.

Reach Resources has wrapped up a 48-hole, 5,281m RC drilling campaign at its Murchison South gold project near Payne's Find in Western Australia. The program targeted areas within and adjacent to conceptual pit shells to upgrade inferred resources and improve confidence for open-pit development. Rock chip sampling across multiple prospects has also been completed, with assay and metallurgical results expected in February.

Great Southern Mining is onto what is starting to look like a major new gold discovery at its Amy Clarke prospect in WA's Duketon gold belt that now stretches across 4.7kms. A new round of aircore drilling has nailed the widest gold intersection yet just 8kms from Regis Resources' Garden Well mill, with a 17-metre hit grading 1.4 grams per tonne from just 20 metres.

Horizon Minerals has inked a land use agreement with the Marlinyu Ghoorlie Native Title Claimant group across almost all of the company's 240 tenements in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields. The voluntary agreement provides a flexible solution to manage how land and resources can be used by setting out the rights and interests of both parties.

Lindian Resources has kicked off a drilling campaign at its North Knoll prospect. The target, which returned rock chips assaying of up to 7.15 per cent total rare earths (TREOs), is one of several high-grade carbonatite-rich lenses previously identified near the company's world-class Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi.

Meeka Metals has delivered more high-grade gold hits from the prolifically mineralised Fairway Shear Zone, which forms part of the company's Murchison gold project in Western Australia. Rosapenna is a new drill target within the shear, with a best hit of 23m grading 1.05g/t gold, including 4m running at 4.67g/t gold. The mineralisation remains open in three directions and highlights the potential for a new discovery.

Octava Minerals has kicked off the first drilling in almost half a century at its Sweeney's prospect in Tasmania, zeroing in on a rich mix of copper, zinc, silver, tin and untested high-grade indium. With historic hits still wide open and a 2000-metre diamond program now underway, the company is pushing to unlock the tonnage, scale and metallurgy on a long-ignored polymetallic system.

Metallurgical test work by Lindian Resources at its Kangankunde rare earths project in Malawi has nailed very high extraction rates and produced a monazite feed grading 54 per cent TREO. Notably, the product includes very favourable magnet rare earths (Nd and Pr) characteristics containing ultra-low uranium – thorium contents using standard simple and scalable low complexity flowsheets.

Terrain Minerals has kicked off a major RC drilling assault across its high priority Lightning and Wildflower gold and silver targets in Western Australia's Murchison gold province. The company says it will drill deeper and along strike of existing stand-out intercepts, potentially leading to a maiden resource at Lightning, slated for mid-next year. Terrain has also identified multiple gold targets extending over 800 metres at its Wildflower project associated with coincident structures highlighted by geophysics.

Estrella Resources says it is on track to unearth a monster 500m tonne limestone resource at its Werumatamata project in Timor Leste after drilling logged large sheets of valuable mineralisation up to 87m thick. The company says the average width logged within the limestone blanket at the project is 55m and it also encountered an unexpected bonus in the form of calcite intersected beneath the target zone, potentially hinting at significant additional tonnes than first thought.

Red Metal Ltd says it has made a major breakthrough in metallurgical testing of its rare earths ore from the company's Sybella project in Queensland that will result in less impurities and higher grades. The company has managed to replace the standard two-stage impurity removal process with a simple Ion exchange process that will lower costs and increase purities.

Siren Gold has unearthed several old workings and taken samples of outcrops in a first pass field program at its Queen Charlotte antimony and gold project in NZ along strike from historical antimony mines. The company has identified a mineralised strike potential of 8kms within a 12km long shear zone in New Zealand's south island. Hangingwall and footwall reefs offer a parallel doubling of potential.