Public Company News

Galan Lithium is set to grow its bank balance by whopping A$50m after receiving firm commitments from institutional and sophisticated investors for a placement that will see the company fast-track exploration and development works across its Hombre Muerto West and Candales lithium brine projects in Argentina’s Salar del Hombre Muerto.

Venus Metals and joint venture partner Rox Resources have continued to rack up high-grade gold hits with infill reverse circulation drilling at their Youanmi gold project in the Murchison district of Western Australia. A cracking 17 metre interval grading 5.14 grams per tonne gold was encountered from 151 metres downhole. Management believes there is strong potential for further increases in the Resource.

Indiana Resources has continued its run of success across South Australia’s revered Gawler Craton, with regional exploration drilling on the gold-rich Labyrinth Shear turning up a new gold discovery along strike from the company’s Ariadne prospect. Better results from the Ariadne East discovery include 8 metres at 1.2 grams per tonne gold from 36m and 4m at 2.28 g/t gold from 40m down-hole.

ASX-listed Neometals’ joint venture company, Primobius GmbH, has successfully commissioned stage one of its showcase lithium-ion battery recycling demonstration plant in Germany. The joint venture company is owned 50:50 by Neometals and SMS group GmbH. The partners have developed an innovative proprietary process that focuses on recovering cobalt and other valuable materials from spent lithium batteries.

Great Southern Mining has rattled the tin for $2.5 million that will largely be funnelled into exploration at its exciting Duketon gold project about 45km north of Laverton in WA’s prolific north-eastern Goldfields. Last week the company reeled off a stellar 59m drill intersection grading 2.1 grams per tonne gold from 53m down hole at the project’s Southern Star prospect.

ASX-listed Conico has notched up a second successive round of sulphide hits as its drilling campaign motors on at the Ryberg project in Greenland. Downhole intervals of 45 metres, 32m and 27.8m of copper sulphide mineralisation have been encountered. The company believes the mineralised system is likely to be ‘fertile’ at depth and is steaming ahead with further drilling and regional geophysics.

ASX-listed minerals technology player Neometals has hailed its latest vanadium recovery pilot plant test work a resounding success. The Perth-based company says the scaled-up pilot trials produced a consistently higher than 99.5 per cent-purity vanadium pentoxide product from the processing of about 14 tonnes of vanadium-bearing steel making by-product, with average recoveries exceeding 75 per cent.

ASX-listed junior explorer Askari Metals has kicked off an initial mapping and geochemical sampling program at its “heavily under-explored” Horry copper-gold project about 90km south-west of Halls Creek in WA’s Kimberley region. The company says the Horry exploration licence area takes in a smattering of old copper and gold workings including the Western Lead gold mine and the Horry Horse and Leo copper-gold workings.

PolarX is making the most of the Alaskan summer and has already put a diamond drill rig on the ground at its high-grade Caribou Dome copper discovery north of Anchorage. The timely move into drilling has been prompted in part by the recent skyward move in the price of the lucrative red metal, which reached all-time highs of US$10,780 per tonne in early May.

Adriatic Metals has chalked up a high-grade, multi-metals hit from step-out diamond drilling at its proposed Vares silver-zinc-lead project development in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The company produced a cracking intersection near its keystone Rupice underground deposit at Vares of 21.1m at 296 g/t silver, 5.46 per cent zinc, 3.7 per cent lead, 1.22 g/t gold and 0.18 per cent copper from 338.6m depth.

ASX-listed gold developer, Classic Minerals has moved a step closer to full-scale gold production at its Kat Gap project near Southern Cross having turned the first sod in a trial mining operation. The company is targeting up to 1,000 ounces of gold initially from a bulk sample that will also provide important geological, engineering and metallurgical information prior to full-scale mining of its 93,000-ounce resource.

Bardoc Gold is crouched and ready to take that elusive leap from gold explorer to producer after the company locked in engineering group GR Engineering as preferred tenderer for the construction of a stand-alone gold processing plant at its namesake Bardoc project north of Kalgoorlie. The move follows hard on the heels of Bardoc initiating a “cash-flow optimisation” study on the multi-deposit gold project.