Public Company News

Xanadu Mines has confirmed it is in the final stages of completing a prefeasibility study on its Kharmagtai copper-gold project that sits in Mongolia’s South Gobi region. The company recently handpassed operational duties for the massive project to joint venture partner and Chinese behemoth, Zijin Mining, and says it has taken additional time to finalise the mine design to ensure a higher standard.

Askari Metals' share price surged 63 per cent today on big volume after a strategic review of its 100 per cent-owned Mt Maguire gold project in Western Australia’s Ashburton region threw up historic high-grade hits. The findings included 2m at 12.14g/t from 35m and 31m at 0.84g/t from 20m as the company moves to tap into the potential for a gold discovery at the site.

Strickland Metals is targeting the near-surface mineralisation at its Gradina prospect in Serbia in a bid to expand the company’s existing 5.4 million-ounce gold equivalent Rogozna project and drive its gold and base metal resource to next-level status. A new diamond-drilling program for 10,000m has been launched at the site that sits in the landlocked Balkan nation.

Latitude 66 has wrapped up what could prove to be a pivotal 18-hole, 2197m diamond drilling program at the K South target within its Kuusamo Schist Belt (KSB) play in Finland, in a bid to lift the project’s gold resource. The company says all samples from the program have now been submitted to MSALABS in Canada, with assay results expected in early November.

Altech Batteries has clocked up a key milestone with the successful launch of its first 60kWh “Cerenergy” sodium-chloride battery prototype in Germany. The company says the battery unit, which has been installed at the Fraunhofer IKTS lab in Dresden, has passed all physical tests with “flying colours” and has smashed through forecast performance and efficiency expectations in the rigorous daily assessments.

In this week’s edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine notable drill intercepts revealed on the ASX, including Global Uranium’s hits up to 5387ppm uranium oxide in Colorado. We also take a look at other interesting drill hits as reported by Superior Resources from its Steam Engine gold project in Queensland and Great Boulder Resources from its Mulga Bill gold prospect in WA.

Triangle Energy has secured the crucial environmental plan approval to drill its Becos-1 well in WA’s Perth Basin and expects to launch the campaign before year’s end in its quest for onshore oil and gas. Rig tenders are now underway to test the shallow target where a best estimate of 5 MMbbl has been identified, with the potential to reach as much as 21 MMbbl.

Estrella Resources has revealed high-grade manganese in Timor-Leste just days after nailing down new exploration licenses at its Samalari prospect in the nation’s Baucau Municipality. The site is showing manganese oxide mineralisation along a 1.7km strike zone with widths of up to 5m and early samples have returned impressive hits going up to 53.9 per cent manganese, according to analysis from Australian Laboratory Services.

Aguia Resources has reinterpreted its high-grade, polymetallic gold-copper-silver-zinc El Dovio play in Colombia as an orogenic lode gold-silver style of mineralisation that was followed later by copper and zinc. The company’s new designation contrasts sharply with its previous casting as a volcanogenic-hosted massive sulphide (VMS/VHMS) deposit and indicates that the base metal component results from emplacement during later tectonic processes.

Lithium Universe has defied market trends to post an upbeat prefeasibility study for its Bécancour lithium carbonate refinery in the Canadian city of Québec, delivering a pre-tax NPV of US$779 million (AU$1.17 billion) and an annual EBITDA of US$147 million (AU$221 million) in its bid to service the growing North American market and fill the conversion gap by reducing the need for Chinese product.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has kicked off a high-resolution aeromagnetic geophysical survey in the northern half of its Pinjin project, 140km north-east of Western Australia’s important mining centre of Kalgoorlie. The survey will provide modern quality data with significantly better resolution than is currently available for the northern part of the project that covers the prospective Jungle Dam area and southward extensions of the Edjudina Goldfield.

Estrella Resources has locked up four extra exploration and evaluation concessions to kick off Timor-Leste’s newly-instituted 2021 mining code direct grant process. The leases, which are particularly prospective for manganese, sit in the Southeast Asian country’s western Baucau Municipality and add to its four exploration licences, 30km to the north-east, that it picked up last year.