Public Company News

Junior explorers such as E79 Gold Mines, Caprice Resources and Thunderbird Resources have seen a significant spike in their share price when betting on a nearology play near a recent or historical discovery. E79's share price surged from its February 6 close of 1.9c to hit a high of 5.4c on February 19 in the two weeks after a neighbour announced a greenfields gold discovery.

Image Resources has kicked off heavy mineral concentrate transport from the company's new Atlas mineral sands mine in WA's Mid West region, by trucking its first batch to Geraldton ready for shipping. Process commissioning at Atlas began early last month and is ahead of schedule, the company says. Throughput rates are up to 80 per cent of the design capacity and the plant is operating at 95 per cent of its capacity.

Altech Batteries has secured the necessary environmental and construction permit to build the company's Cerenergy GridPack production facility in Saxony, Germany, and can now focus on locking in pr

This week's Bulls N' Bears ASX Runner of the Week is… Wide Open Agriculture. Its share price ran on sales of its lupin protein to Europe, Latin America and Australia. South African helium producer Renergen announced maiden commercial sales of its liquid helium, Resolution Minerals acquired three antimony/gold projects on Australia's east coast and Metal Powder debuted on the ASX on its metal powder process technology.

Metallurgical test work by Strickland Metals on the Palomino deposit at its Horse Well gold camp in Western Australia's northeastern goldfields has notched up whopping gold recovery rates of up to 88.6 per cent. Using six composite rock samples from the deposit, the study found the gold mineralisation is highly amenable to the normal processing techniques of three-stage crushing, followed by gravity and cyanide leach processing.

Ora Banda Mining has again struck gold, with a stellar set of high-grade intercepts at its latest discovery, Little Gem, south of its Riverina gold camp, outside Kalgoorlie. The company is gushing over its latest results from a drilling program exhibiting thick, rich lodes of gold. The results have sparked an immediate 16-hole follow-up campaign to pepper a 4.7km gold trend emerging south of its flagship Riverina mine.

GreenTech Metals has jagged enticing visual intersections at its Whundo copper-zinc project in Western Australia's Pilbara region from the first two diamond drill holes in a 4000m stage two program. The holes intersected thick zones of massive and semi-massive sulphides. The tantalising results from the company's Shelby and Austin targets confirm down-plunge continuation of mineralised shoots at the project.

Strickland Metals has launched a 50,000-metre diamond drilling program, the biggest yet at its Rogozna gold and base metals project, in the giant Tethyan Metallogenic Belt in southern Serbia's Raška district. The campaign aims to expand the existing combined 6.69-million-ounce gold equivalent resource at Rogozna and if possible, improve grades and iron-out grade variation and spatial distribution in its resource models.

Terrain Minerals is busy pursuing three gold projects, including two in WA's Mid West region and a newish gold project in Queensland, along with gallium, rare earths and nickel-copper plays on the go in WA. It is currently planning new drilling campaigns for the three gold targets.

Kalgoorlie Gold Mining is gearing up for an expanded air core drilling campaign to test for extensions to its recent Lighthorse gold discovery at the company's Pinjin project in WA's renowned Laverton gold region. The upcoming drill program will aim to stretch the impressive discovery's footprint by nearly 2.5km, with drilling planned for up to 1.4km to the north and 1km to the south of the mineralised zone.

This week's Bulls N' Bears Big Hits examines some notable drill intercepts revealed on the ASX, including Mithril Silver and Gold's 4.95m intercept in Mexico assaying 20.5g/t gold and 1833g/t silver. Variscan Mines' San Jose Mine in Spain and Redcastle Resources' Queen Alexandra project in Western Australia's Eastern Goldfields also reported some interesting drill hits.

Latitude 66 Limited will this month launch a major 9000-metre air core drilling campaign at its fully owned Edjudina gold project, near to Kalgoorlie Gold Mining's exciting new high-grade gold discovery. The program will target multiple gold anomalies identified through previous geochemical testing, geophysical surveys and historical drilling in WA's Eastern Goldfields and aims to unlock the site's full potential.