Public Company News

ChemX Materials has pulled in $1.1m from sophisticated investors to help fund the completion of its High purity alumina pilot plant in Perth. The company will also look to raise another $500k from shareholders in an SPP and ChemX directors will kick $65,000 into the raise. The company’s HPA pilot plant is already 80 per cent complete.

Javelin Minerals has identified a large uranium target at its Stakeyard Well prospect that forms part of its larger Mt Ida operation in WA following a comprehensive data review of all its existing projects. Management says the review highlighted a strong anomaly that extends across a package of ground 28km in length by an average 3.3km width where historical air-core drilling revealed positive uranium results.

St George Mining has increased the strike at its Destiny clay-based rare earths project in Western Australia’s Goldfields region by 3km after air-core drilling at the site delivered solid results of up to 3160ppm TREO. The company returned thick and near-surface assays from 13 AC holes with highlights showing an 18m section grading 1919ppm TREO from just 18m including 3m reaching the peak 3160ppm TREO result from 30m.

Askari Metals is preparing for a flood of results from a major trenching campaign after submitting 2000 samples for analysis at its Namibian Uis lithium project. The company says it has now completed mapping and sampling of priority pegmatites on its north-easternmost exploration permit at Uis where it targeted four key pegmatites with 135 trenches for a total of 7269m of trenching. It is now working to generate additional targets.

Venus Metals is on a roll with the first drill campaign at its Deep South prospect within its Youanmi project in WA’s Murchison hitting lithium paydirt. High-grade lithium pegmatites were intersected at both the East and North zones, with strong tantalum enrichment also recorded. The best grade recorded in the maiden campaign came in at a significant 2.89 per cent lithium oxide.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears ASX Runner of the Week is… Lord Resources. Its shares hiked more than 135 per cent to join fellow movers and shakers ADX Energy, Universal Biosensors and Lion Energy.

Gold Mountain says it has identified widespread granitoid and related rock types known to possess a strong potential to host rare earths minerals throughout its Down Under project in Brazil. The company says it has found many examples of leucogranites and charnockite rocks in five of its new tenements within the project where it is undertaking exploration stream geochemistry and other sampling.

Larvotto Resources is closing in on an international financing package worth US$8 million (AU$12.1 million) to help develop its Hillgrove antimony-gold project in New South Wales. The company has signed a non-binding term sheet with Xcelsior Capital and Wogen that will provide it with a pre-payment loan for the life of the Hillgrove mine and a working capital loan.

Altech Batteries has revealed a compelling set of numbers for its planned Cerenergy battery project in Germany, with its DFS forecasting a NPV of €169 million and annual revenue of €106 million generating EBITDA earnings of a juicy €51million per annum. The company says capital cost estimates of €156 million and a steady-state payback period of 3.7 years add to the project’s appeal.

Fuelled by little more than a curious mind and a well-stocked cellar, Dollar Bill has turned his gaze towards the role battery inventories played in the bursting of the lithium bubble – and the potential for recovery. It seems clear that battery manufacturers played a key part in both inflating and then bursting the bubble and now may be poised to inflate it again.

Buxton Resources is engaged in a fourth Aboriginal heritage survey at its Graphite Bull project in Western Australia’s Gascoyne region in a bid to further expand the area covered by its previous agreements to about 3 square kilometres. The company undertook similar surveys in 2013, 2014 and 2022 as exploration of the area around its original 2014 inferred 4-million-tonne graphite resource has expanded.

Galan Lithium has continued to ramp up its Hombre Muerto West lithium chloride project in Argentina, with evaporation in its first pond continuing, a second now filling up and construction of a third well underway. The company says the first pond already contains about 500 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent, with production planned to start in the first half of next year.