Newmont-backed Legacy Confirms Epithermal Discovery

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THE CONFERENCE CALLER: “There’s a reason why we bring the rocks to the table,” Legacy Minerals Holdings (ASX: LGM) CEO and managing director Chris Byrne explained from the company booth at the 2023 RIU Sydney Resources Round-up.

Legacy Minerals announced that assays had confirmed high-grade mineralisation and the potential for a large-scale, low-sulphidation epithermal deposit at its Bauloora gold project in New South Wales, where the Newmont subsidiary recently entered a $15 million farm-in and joint venture to fund further drilling.

Highlights from the new Bluecap prospect included 6m at 8 grams per tonne gold-equivalent from 57m.

“What we’ve intercepted is the top of an epithermal system,” Byrne told Resources Roadhouse, indicating a sample on the table in front of him.

“There was a lot of excitement around our visuals that came out 10-odd weeks ago, and what the combination of the grades and the textures demonstrate, is that we’ve got a preserved high-level epithermal system.

“The importance of that preserved system is that we’ve got a boiling zone at depth … and those boiling zones are typically associated with bonanza grades of gold and silver.”

Byrne said Bauloora was “incredibly early stage” and the company had only done one other drill campaign at the 330 square kilometre project.

In answer to why people should get involved in such an early-stage project, Byrne said that was why he brought the rocks to the table.

“It’s the weight of … geological evidence that there is potential for a world-class system,” he said.

“When you look at the textures that we’re seeing in the drill core, the textures that we’ve seen in the rock chips, and if you’ve then seen that, on surface, over a footprint that’s close to 30 square kilometres, you’re talking about … a globally-significant project scale.”

He said it was also the rocks and the textures that had caught Newmont’s eye.
“These systems are Newmont’s bread and butter,” he said.

“They mine these projects, they’ve discovered them, they’ve developed them, they’ve got a good database so they know what they’re looking at – and New South Wales is a safe jurisdiction.”

Bauloora is one of Legacy’s seven projects in NSW’s Lachlan Fold Belt.

 

NickelSearch Well-funded for Nickel and Lithium Exploration at Carlingup

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THE CONFERENCE CALLER: NickelSearch (ASX: NIS) anticipates a “very busy six months” as it puts an underwritten $2.4 million raising towards more exploration at its Carlingup nickel project. By Ngaire McDiarmid.

Speaking with The Resources Roadhouse on the sidelines of the 2023 RIU Sydney Resources Round-up, managing director Nicole Duncan said the company was firmly focused on nickel sulphide at Carlingup, near Ravensthorpe in Western Australia, but was also investigating the project’s newly-defined lithium potential.

Carlingup currently hosts a recently-updated resource of 8.3 million tonnes for 155,000t of contained nickel.

Duncan told Resources Roadhouse the company was “on the ground drilling at the moment”, with RC drilling focused on greenfield nickel sulphide targets Serendipity, B1, Lipple and Wadley.

Diamond drilling was planned to test the strong electromagnetic conductor found earlier this year at the Sexton nickel sulphide target, Duncan said.

“We’re also going to be putting diamond holes into [the former high-grade nickel sulphide mine] RAV8, to test if there are extensions to the high-grade nickel shoots,” she said.

The money would also combine with state government EIS co-funding to drill a base metals volcanogenic-hosted massive sulphide target, west of RAV8, Duncan added.

As for Carlingup’s new lithium potential, NickelSearch had “boots on the ground” activities planned including mapping and rock chip sampling to test high-priority target areas, about 10km from Allkem’s Mt Cattlin lithium mine.

“It’s early days, but exciting,” Duncan said.

 

Widgie Nickel Unveils Discovery, Lodges Mining Proposal

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THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Well-placed Widgie Nickel (ASX: WIN) has outlined progress towards lithium mining plus a nickel discovery at the company’s flagship Mt Edwards project, ahead of today’s presentation to the 2023 RIU Sydney Resources Round-up.

“It’s very much a multi-dimensional story,” managing director and CEO Steve Norregaard told Resources Roadhouse on the sidelines.

The company is also in a very active corporate space. Its nickel assets are proximal to producer and takeover target Mincor Resources, while its Faraday lithium deposit is proximal to Essential Metals, which recently rejected a bid by Tianqi Lithium Energy Australia and welcomed Mineral Resources as a major shareholder.

On the lithium front, Widgie lodged a mining proposal on Monday for its Faraday direct shipping ore lithium operation, at Mt Edwards in Western Australia.

Norregaard said the company was making rapid progress, given only six months had passed since announcing finding rock chips with lithium and two months since releasing a maiden lithium resource.

“Now we’ve started the process of permitting for a starter pit … which is a big achievement and very much geared towards the fact that the demand for potential DSO products is probably going to be short-lived because we can see there’s many, many companies looking for lithium, there’s some very, very big deposits,” he said.

“We’re fortunate that Faraday occurs on a granted mining tenement so we have very, very little challenges in order to be able to bring this product to market, so I’m supremely optimistic that our starter pit will be approved ready for extraction, prior to the end of this financial year.”

He said lodging the mining proposal also gave confidence to potential lithium offtake partners.

Separately, the company – which floated on its nickel endowment – announced a nickel discovery south of its Gillett Resource, underpinning the growth potential in the Widgie South area at Mt Edwards.

Results included 30m at 1.17 per cent nickel, 0.14 per cent copper, 0.03 per cent cobalt, 0.04 grams per tonne gold, 0.11g/t palladium and 0.09g/t platinum from 214m.

“What we do find really exciting is that we were previously led to believe that Gillett was cut off to the south,” Norregaard said.

He said the Widgie South scoping study was underway and he was “supremely confident” they’d be in a strong position to understand the value Gillett South represented to the company by year-end.

Widgie was also in “the final throes” of a feasibility study on its advanced Armstrong nickel deposit, expected to be development-ready in late 2023.

The overall Mt Edwards project currently contains more than 168,000 tonnes of nickel across 12 deposits.

Gold’s Next Target Up to US$2,500/oz: ABC Refinery at RIU Sydney

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THE CONFERENCE CALLER: The gold price has rallied 25 per cent from its 2022 lows and there is “plenty more” potential to drive it higher, delegates heard at the 2023 RIU Sydney Resources Round-up. By Ngaire McDiarmid

ABC Refinery global head institutional markets Nicholas Frappell told the conference he was not surprised gold was currently around the US$2,000 an ounce/A$3,000/oz mark and said the next targets were US$2,100/oz and $2,500/oz.

He said the four macro themes which were dominating 2023 – and would set the tone for 2024 – were banking sector stress, official sector gold buying, the US debt ceiling and Japan’s exit from yield curve control.

“All contain benefits for gold, whether it is market disruption, anxiety over the valuation of other assets or potential impacts on US growth,” he told the conference.

The closure of Silicon Valley Bank and rescue of Credit Suisse meant “investors mindful of risk started piling heavily into gold” in recent months.

In addition, central banks’ reserves have “risen hugely in the last few decades”, increasing circa 10-fold, Frappell said.

“Last year 1,136 metric tons of gold was purchased by the official sector, January and February of this year another 158t, which is a fairly good start to the year,” he said.

He said official sector purchases were not about rejecting the US dollar but portfolio diversification.

As for the US debt ceiling, “or the possibility of the wheels coming off,” it was less than a month away, Frappell said.

The idea that the US might default was not impossible but it was “unthinkable”, he said, adding the Federal Reserve was doing a lot to manage the process.

“If I can sum up what a debt ceiling crisis means is that even if it’s resolved and worked through, what you end up with is market volatility … and generally speaking I would take that as a positive for gold, vis-à-vis other assets,” he said.

The fourth macro theme was the Bank of Japan ending its long-running yield curve control strategy, that’s kept 10-year bond yields around zero, which was “probably good for gold” and “generally dollar negative”.

“The big number in US dollar gold is 2075 [an ounce] … we have to get through that level to really make progress,” Frappell said.

“There is plenty more contained in those four thematics that I mentioned that has the potential to drive gold significantly higher.”

 

ABx Group’s Rare Earths Resource Update Exceeds 20Mt Milestone

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THE CONFERENCE CALLER: ABx Group (ASX: ABX) has continued the trend of expanding the rare earth elements (REE) deposit at its Deep Leads – Rubble Mound project. By Ngaire McDiarmid

Speaking to The Resources Roadhouse on the sidelines of the 2023 RIU Sydney Resources Round-up, ABx Group said it had increased the Mineral Resource by 50 per cent to 21 million tonnes – from 18 per cent of the prospect area – at its project in northern Tasmania.

The upgrade stemmed from 30 new holes, redrilling old bauxite holes that did not reach the REE horizon and more assays from incompletely assayed thick REE zones.

“There’s a clear pathway to grow the resource, and also the grade and the thickness are both higher than our last than our last announcement,” managing director and CEO Dr Mark Cooksey said.

“So that journey of gradually increasing the size and quality of the resource is continuing.”

Meanwhile, the company’s 83 per cent-owned subsidiary Alcore Limited is focused on building a pilot plant to turn aluminium industry waste into aluminium fluoride and other industrial chemicals.

Cooksey said he expected the plant to be built this year and commissioned early next year.

ABx is also advancing its bauxite projects in Queensland and Tasmania.

 

Turaco Gold Points to More Potential in Cote d’Ivoire

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THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Explorer Turaco Gold (ASX: TCG) has pointed to further potential as it announced gold results from two projects in Côte d’Ivoire, ahead of its presentation on Tuesday to the 2023 RIU Sydney Resources Round-up. By Ngaire McDiarmid

The company announced drilling results including 15m at 1.04 grams per tonne gold from 64m, from a parallel structure to the main Satama discovery at its Eburnea project in central Côte d’Ivoire.

“We got anomalous gold along that whole [parallel] structure, which is about 3km in strike,” managing director Justin Tremain told Resources Roadhouse on the conference sidelines.

At Satama, which about 12 months ago was “just a soil anomaly”, Tremain said Turaco had only tested about half of the known, mapped strike and soil anomaly and everything “remained very much open to the north”.

Turaco also reported auger drilling results from the early-stage Odienne project (76 per cent effective interest) in the country’s north, of up to 6.35g/t gold from bottom of hole sampling in saprolite.

Tremain said Odienne was in “a very interesting geological address, on the edge of the Siguiri Basin … one of the best addresses in West Africa”.

“We’ve previously, with geophysics, demonstrated that we have 30km of the margin of the prospective geology sitting within our tenement,” he said.

“And then this last program, we tested a very small part of that 30km … and we’ve defined a 2km-long what we call saprolite, which is an in-situ gold mineralisation for us then to follow-up with deeper drilling.”

Turaco said soil geochemistry had also defined two additional “large-scale and coherent gold anomalies” at Odienne South, over 6km and 1km respectively.

No Net Zero Without Boost to Mining Investment: Euroz Hartleys

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THE CONFERENCE CALLER: There will be no net zero by 2050 without a substantial increase in mining investment, according to Euroz Hartleys (ASX: EZL) at the 2023 RIU Sydney Resources Round-up. By Ngaire McDiarmid

Managing director and head of institutional sales Tim Bunney said the largest wealth management firm in WA was “incredibly optimistic about the resilience and the outlook of the resources market globally”.

He said the current inflationary environment had put pressure on margins but had created a strong backdrop for commodity prices.

The outlook was further buoyed by the emerging decarbonisation and electrification thematic, coupled with significant underinvestment, Bunney said.

Resources analyst Michael Scantlebury said the energy transition represented “the greatest opportunity” the resources sector had ever faced, touching on three topics he was strongly advised not to talk about, namely coal, politics, oil and gas.

He said the oil and gas industry spent about half a trillion US dollars in the upstream sector maintaining supply and argued there needed to be an increase in both oil and gas investment while rapidly building out the renewable sector “to ensure an energy crisis does not occur in the transition period”.

He believed the build-out phase would be the most metals-intensive and would require spending in the order of oil and gas capex to achieve net zero targets.

Electric vehicles and the build-out of electricity grids were the huge drivers of metals demand in the process, he told the conference which has attracted 1,500 delegates.

“We’re confident that exploration needs to increase and that is largely just to backfill and grow out the pipeline of resource projects which is becoming depleted and more marginal as well,” he said.

Referring to a chicken and egg scenario, Scantlebury said a solution for the lack of exploration, especially greenfields exploration, was high commodity prices to drive risk capital into greenfield exploration.

“Even if you ignore everything I say about the energy transition and you’re a climate sceptic and you believe in thermal coal is the solution to all energy requirements, you can still be a resource sector bull,” he said.

He said the mining investment cycle showed a capex underspend since 2015 and was underpinned by traditional growth from emerging markets in India and South-East Asia.

“We believe that the energy transition metal requirement is purely the cherry on top of this metal demand going forward,” he said.

 

See What Sydney RIU Resources roundup Has in Store

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THE CONFERENCE CALLER: The RIU Sydney Resources Roundup starts next week with over 90 companies presenting and exhibiting. Here’s a taste of what to expect.

 

Pan Asia Metals (ASX: PAM)

Pan Asia Metals is a battery and critical metals explorer and developer with a strategy of identifying and developing projects with potential to enable the company to produce metal compounds and other value-added products to meet the projected high-technology demand.

Pan Asia Metals has two lithium projects and one tungsten project, all located in Thailand, a jurisdiction the company has acknowledged as a low-cost advanced industrial economy that fits its strategy of developing downstream value-add opportunities in low-cost environments close to end market users.

The company’s focus of late has been on its Reung Kiet lithium project (RKLP), a hard rock lithium project with lithium chiefly hosted in lepidolite/mica rich pegmatite dykes and veins.

Reung Kiet has been subjected to previous open pit mining extracting tin and tantalum from weathered pegmatites into the early 1970s.

Pan Asia’s stated objective has been to complete sufficient drilling with the aim of increasing and converting much of the existing Inferred Mineral Resource into the Indicated and Measured categories.

The intention is to use the upgraded Mineral Resource as part of a Pre-feasibility study planned for later this year.

Recent drilling at the Reung Kiet lithium prospect has continued to support the geological model of extensive lithium mineralisation hosted in lepidolite rich pegmatite dykes-veins and adjacent metasediments.

The mineralised lithium zone is currently defined over a strike length of over one kilometre and remains open along strike to the north and south, and at depth especially in the south.

Pan Asia has now moved the drill rig to the Bang I Tum prospect where it will evaluate an existing Exploration Target and more recently reported adjacent target zones.

The company’s other projects include the Kata Thong geothermal lithium and hard rock lithium-tin project – a compilation of five Special Prospecting Licence Applications (SPLA) in the Phang Nga Province in southern Thailand.

The Khao Soon tungsten project is a wolframite style tungsten project located south of Bangkok in Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Southern Thailand where Pan Asia holds a 100 per cent interest in two contiguous Special Prospecting Licences and one SPLA.

 

 

Torque Metals (ASX: TOR)

Torque Metals holds a portfolio of high-grade gold deposits in Western Australia, the main focus of which is the company’s 100 per cent-owned Paris gold project, located outside Kalgoorlie within the Boulder-Lefroy Fault Zone in the Western Australian Goldfields.

The Paris gold project comprises nine granted, pre-native title mining licences; two prospecting licences; and three exploration licences covering a total area of 176 square kilometres.

Torque considers the project to be vastly underexplored, as past drilling by previous owners was generally restricted to the top 50 metres.

Torque is of the opinion this provides plenty of opportunities for discovery of gold mineralisation through the application of modern-day exploration techniques and by undertaking more extensive, and deeper, drilling.

To that end, the company has already carried out five drilling campaigns at Paris with the objective of better defining the zones most likely to rapidly increase the project’s gold resource base.

Torque has, to date, discovered six different prospects within the 2.5 kilometres Paris Gold Camp.

The company recently commenced a new round of drilling on the Paris, Observation and HHH prospects targeting gold anomalies identified from historical drilling, machine learning algorithms, and geological models.

A diamond drilling campaign is aiming to extend known mineralised zones and to further delineate mineralisation.

This will coincide with infill and extensional RC drilling seeking information on the continuity and distribution of gold mineralisation.

The drilling follows up assay results released earlier this year that Torque claimed to clearly support the high-grade mineralisation structures and the concept of a potential Gold Camp at Paris.

“The results are highly encouraging and, importantly, show all gold rich prospects lining up in a north, north-westerly orientation, further supporting the potential of a ‘Paris Gold Camp’,” Torque Metals managing director Cristian Moreno said.

“Significantly, the successful holes between HHH and Paris suggest a mineralised structure potentially linking the 1.5 kilometres distance among the two deposits.

“Additionally, while further high-grade north of HHH indicates a potential rich-gold open pit deposit between HHH and Observation (1km), the substantial grades westwards of the Paris prospect confirm a consistent mineralised body that is still open to the west and at depth.”

 

Lanthanein Resources (ASX: LNR)

Lanthanein Resources could be categorized as the epitome of the modern exploration company with its focus on rare earth elements and kaolin.

Recent activity across the portfolio saw commencement of drilling at the Murraydium project in South Australia.

The company is investigating what it sees as an exciting exploration opportunity in a region that is considered highly prospective for ionic clay hosted rare earth deposits.

Lanthanein is following on from previous work done in the region by Australian Rare Earths that outlined an extensive mineralised system where shallow near surface exploration has demonstrated potential to delineate substantial JORC Resources of REEs.

At the time of writing, Lanthanein Resources had announced completion of two surveys in preparation for upcoming exploration programs at the Lyons rare earths project in Western Australia.

The company intimated the proposed drill programs will target new high‐grade ironstones similar to what has previously been encountered by drilling at Lyons 11, 12, 13 and 27 prospects.

“Additional drilling of the existing discoveries at Lyons 12, 13 and 27, which are approx. two kilometres from Hastings Technology Metals’ Frasers and Simons Find pits will allow the progress to a potential resource estimation,” Lanthanein Resources technical director Brian Thomas said.

“Drilling the multiple new ironstone trends under shallow cover only recently identified from our review of geophysics will add significantly to the exploration and resource potential.

“We also plan to diamond drill test the magnetic rims of two of the large‐scale Carbonatites.”

Lanthanein recently reported brightness results from a first pass aircore drilling program at its Koolya kaolin project in WA.

The company completed a wide spaced drill program in December 2022, with drillholes spaced 500m apart, covering 15km of prospective kaolin rich granite and intersected widespread kaolin of varying thickness, with a best result of 30m thick bright white kaolin from 4m depth.

“The exceptional brightness results in samples from our first pass aircore drilling at Koolya project is a great result,” Thomas said.

“There is a significant areal extent of high quality bright white kaolin to support the potential for a significant kaolin resource and high purity alumina feedstock project to be delineated with further drilling.”

 

Who’s Who in the Roundup Zoo

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THE CONFERENCE CALLER: With the RIU Sydney Resources Roundup fast approaching, we thought it would be the ideal time to check in an a few of the companies that will be presenting to see what they’re up to.

 

Alto Metals (ASX: AME)

Alto Metals recently reported a Mineral Resource update for the company’s 100 per cent-owned Sandstone gold project in Western Australia.

The updated Mineral Resource incorporated updates for deposits across the Sandstone project, including the Indomitable Camp (including a maiden resource for Indomitable East and Musketeer), an update to Lord Nelson and a maiden Mineral Resource estimate for Bull Oak.

The independent Mineral Resource Estimate outlined an optimised and pit-constrained 17.6 million tonnes at 1.5 grams per tonne gold for 832,000 ounces of gold within $2,500 per ounce optimised pit-shells reported at 0.5g/t gold cut-off.

The latest MRE included all drilling Alto had completed on the aforementioned deposits up to the end of November 2022.

It is important to note that Resource estimates for Lord Henry, Vanguard, Vanguard North, Havilah Camp, Tiger Moth, Piper and Ladybird deposits remained unchanged from Mineral Resources the company reported in March 2022, September 2018 and June 2019, respectively.

“This latest update once again highlights the shallow nature of mineralisation and has delivered a robust, optimised and pit-constrained Resource of 832,000 ounces gold at 1.5 grams per tonne, representing 80 per cent of the total MRE and remains open in all directions,” Alto Metals managing director Matthew Bowles said.

“Our systematic approach to exploration is continuing to deliver and we are confident further drilling will continue to grow the resource and increase the confidence of additional Inferred resources to Indicated.”

With over 27 per cent of the Total MRE within the optimised pit-shells in the Indicated category, Alto considers the total mineral resources for the Sandstone gold project have a reasonable prospect of eventually being mined.

These considerations stem from the shallow nature and the thickness and gold grades of the deposits, which are located on granted mining or exploration leases, and close to existing infrastructure.

“The company is focused on adding further ounces and sees plenty of avenues to continue growing the Sandstone resource with numerous priority targets, as well as starting to target the significant potential at depth, which remains relatively untested,” Bowles remarked.

“The total mineral resource now delineated at Sandstone is a significant milestone for the company.”

 

Lunnon Metals (ASX: LM8)

Lunnon Metals made the market take notice by releasing an updated nickel JORC (2012) Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the Warren deposit within the company’s Kambalda nickel project (KNP) in Western Australia.

Lunnon reported the updated Warren MRE at 445,000 tonnes at 2.5 per cent nickel for 11,200 contained nickel tonnes, comprising: – 345,000 tonnes at 2.6 per cent nickel for 8,800 nickel tonnes in Indicated Resource; and – 100,000 tonnes at 2.4 per cent nickel for 2,400 nickel tonnes in Inferred Resource.

The update took Lunnon Metals’ global MRE across the KNP to 2.9 million tonnes at 3.1 per cent nickel for 87,800 contained nickel tonnes.

To put the achievement into focus, this equates to a 125 per cent increase in contained metal since Lunnon Metals listed on the boards of the ASX in June 2021.

“The drill programs at Warren have delivered steady growth to the MRE but importantly, have achieved other, just as significant, outcomes,” Lunnon Metals managing director Ed Ainscough said.

“We have hit nickel in host positions not previously considered prospective in this area, opening up an exciting new exploration search space.

“This discovery has dramatically increased the footprint of nickel mineralisation at Warren, now captured in the increased MRE.

“To test this potential properly, we will likely need to get underground and this MRE provides confidence that Warren will form an important part of the PFS studies for a possible re-start of the Foster nickel mine, from which Warren would be accessed.”

Lunnon will use the MRE as the basis of economic studies to investigate the potential to mine the Warren deposit as part of a Foster PFS.

These studies will include mine design and scheduling, estimation of capital access costs, estimation of future operating costs of mining and discussion with potential ore tolling and concentrate purchase partners with respect to the metallurgical recovery and payability terms of future Warren nickel sulphide production.

These studies, if positive, will form the basis of a development study that could eventually position the company to negotiate with potential ore tolling and concentrate purchase partners in the immediate local area.

 

Revolver Resources (ASX: RRR)

Revolver Resources is a copper-focused exploration play with two 100 per cent-owned copper projects in Queensland.

The Dianne project covers six Mining Leases and an Exploration Permit in the proven polymetallic Hodkinson Province in north Queensland.

Project Osprey covers six exploration permits within the North-West Minerals Province, one of the world’s richest mineral producing regions.

The principal targets Revolver is chasing are Mount Isa style copper and IOCG deposits.

Late 2022, Revolver released an initial Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the Dianne Mine primary and supergene massive sulphide (MS) and the Green Hill supergene oxide deposits.

The MRE for the Dianne Mine includes:

Dianne Primary and Supergene MS: Total Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource of 135,000 tonnes at 6.1 per cent copper for 8,200 tonnes of contained copper metal, at a 0.5 per cent copper cut-off grade.

Green Hill Supergene Oxide: Total Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource of 1.49 million tonnes at 0.66 per cent copper for 11,000 tonnes of contained copper metal, at a 0.25 per cent cut-off grade.

The combined MRE tonnage contains 72.1 per cent in the Inferred Mineral Resource and 27.9 per cent in the Indicated Mineral Resource categories.

“This initial mineral resource estimate equips Revolver with the necessary information to progress a dual track approach to unlocking early value at Dianne,” Revolver Resources managing director Pat Williams said.

“The already establish highly prospective copper district surrounding Dianne is now complimented by the clear definition of the starting resource that has the potential to support near term open pit mining.”

Revolver began 2023 in an equally exciting way with the announcement it had discovered a substantial new VMS system in the district scale tenement package containing the Larramore Volcanic Belt, within the greater Dianne project area.

Following results of a Heli-EM survey that had identified multiple priority conductive anomalies across the region, Revolver’s first diamond hole testing the first of these targets confirmed the VMS potential of the district and the validity of the Heli-EM targets intersecting VMS mineralisation.

“This is a ground-breaking result and provides Revolver with the clear evidence needed to upscale exploration activities across this exciting district-scale copper precinct,” Williams said.

 

 

Who’s Who in the Roundup Zoo

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THE CONFERENCE CALLER: With the RIU Sydney Resources Roundup fast approaching, we thought it would be the ideal time to check in an a few of the companies that will be presenting to see what they’re up to.

 

FYI Resources (ASX: FYI)

FYI Resources has developed an innovative process design for the integrated production of high quality, high purity alumina (HPA) predominantly for electric vehicles (lithium-ion batteries), sapphire glass, LEDs / micro-LEDs and other broader tech applications.

FYI is positioning itself to be recognised by the marketplace as a producer of 4N and 5N HPA in the rapidly developing high-tech product markets.

With this in mind, the company recently commenced an extended HPA production run tailored to meet customer specifications through the company’s wholly owned pilot plant located in Perth, Western Australia.

FYI is undertaking a long duration market sample production run of high quality HPA to supply to potential customers following requests for follow up samples produced to meet the specifications of certain end users.

The HPA will be generated via FYI’s innovative process flowsheet, which it has optimised through development work modifications and pilot plant testwork carried out over the past 12 months.

A portion of the generated HPA will be directed to specialised finishing (to be completed by the end user) for use as a separator ceramic coating in the electric vehicle battery market.

FYI is committed to progressing the HPA project strategy through to commercial production via a defined project engineering pathway.

This pathway will be laid once FYI receives all project data from Alcoa following the termination of a joint development agreement between the two companies.

FYI will establish a revised development schedule for the completion of both the small-scale production and commercial facilities, which it anticipates being released a soon as possible.

“With FYI now back in control of our HPA development, we are undertaking these HPA pilot plant production runs in response to end user requests that demonstrates the demand for our high quality HPA,” FYI Resources Managing Director Roland Hill commented:

“We see this production run as being a critical piece in addressing potential customer product assessment needs as the results may lead to further development commitments.

“As a company, we are committed to the development of the HPA project and will continue to address potential customer product specifications as a fundamental function of our project development and project value growth.”

 

Meteoric Resources (ASX: MEI)

Meteoric Resources went from chocolates to more chocolates with its purchase of the Caldeira project, a Tier 1 ionic clay rare earths project located in Minas Gerais State, Brazil.

The Caldeira project came with 30 licenses (21 Mining Licenses and 9 Mining Licence Applications) and a swathe of previous exploration, including 1,311 shallow auger drill holes for 13,037 metres across six of the licenses that had returned ultra-high-grade total rare earth oxide (TREO) intersections, all of which were reported from surface.

“The distribution of the rare earth elements at Caldeira is enriched in heavy rare earth elements (HREE),” Meteoric Resources director Dr Andrew Tunks enthused at the time.

“Additionally, the sample results to date are strongly enriched in the magnet rare earths of terbium, dysprosium, praesidium and neodymium, which make up more than 22 per cent of the total rare earth elemental composition.”

Meteoric wasted little time in carrying out a review of previous metallurgical testwork that had been performed on the project’s Capo do Mel prospect in 2019.

“The average recovery of the low temperature magnet REE, praesidium and neodymium, was 58 per cent and the average recovery of the more valuable high temperature magnet REE, terbium and dysprosium, was 43 per cent,” Tunks explained.

“These results were achieved by leaching with an ammonium sulphate solution [(NH4)2SO4)] in weakly acidic conditions [pH4] and atmospheric conditions.

“The excellent recoveries in this simple process is a crucial observation and shows that for the Capo do Mel prospect, a considerable portion of the target REE are adsorbed onto the clays.

“In layman’s terms, this means the REEs are bonded onto the outside of the clay minerals (adsorbed) and can be recovered by washing the clay in a weak ammonium sulphate solution at room temperature and pressure.

“This is not the case for many rare earth element projects, where the REEs are tightly bound within the mineral lattice or are even in colloidal suspension and require a much more intensive treatment process.”

In April, Meteoric announced a $25 million raising to fund its 2023 work program at Caldeira, that will include drilling, metallurgical testwork and commencing a Preliminary Economic Assessment.

 

Talga Resources (ASX: TLG)

Talga Resources recently increased graphite mineral Resources at the company’s Vittangi graphite project in Sweden.

The project already boasted the largest graphite Resource in Europe, the update for which will underpin potential expansion pathways to anode production beyond 100,000 tonnes per annum, which the company had earlier outlined for the project and expansion of the Niska deposit.

The update was based on Talga’s 2022 Niska drilling campaign and increased the Vittangi Global Mineral Resource estimate by 23 per cent to 36.9 million tonnes of graphite (Cg) ore at 23.1 per cent Cg using an 11 per cent Cg cut-off grade, containing 8.5 million tonnes of Cg.

This includes Indicated Resources estimated to total 27.8 million tonnes averaging 23.8 per cent Cg and Inferred Resources estimated to total nine million tonnes averaging 21.2 per cent Cg.

The estimate included a maiden Mineral Resource for new extensions to graphite mineralisation at the Niska deposit – now named the Niska Link – the delineation of which continues to support the continuity of graphite grade between known deposits.

The total Niska Mineral Resource was increased to an estimated total of 14.9 million tonnes averaging 21.8 per cent Cg, containing 3.3 million tonnes of graphite, including Indicated Resources estimated to total 12 million tonnes averaging 22 per cent Cg and Inferred Resources estimated to total 2.9 million tonnes at 21 per cent Cg.

A new Exploration Target is anticipated across the project area that will entail drilling of deeper potential extensions of the existing Mineral Resources, as well as infill drilling.

Talga is in talks with European battery maker Automotive Cells Company SE looking to complete a binding offtake agreement for supply of Talga’s trademarked active anode material for Li-ion batteries, Talnode-C.

Talga and French battery manufacturer Verkor finalised a non-binding Letter of Intent to supply Talnode-C.

Talga has long been ahead of the graphite game and is well placed as the European lithium-ion battery market continues to grow.

Demand for coated graphite anode in Europe is tipped to reach over 1.3 million tonnes per year.

This, along with Talga’s increasing number of customers, underscores the company’s ambitions to further increase the Vittangi resource.