Welcome to our roundup of some of the most interesting mining investment, exploration, and development stories on Theassay.com from the last week.
Financing news
In financing news over the last seven days, we heard that Grid Metals Corp. (TSXV: GRDM) has closed a C$4,920,000 first tranche of a non-brokered private placement for gross proceeds of C$8,520,000.
The First Tranche of the offering consisted of the following of 20,000,000 charitable flow-through common shares of the company sold at a price of C$0.21 per charity share for gross proceeds of C$4,200,000 and 6,000,000 ordinary common shares of the company sold at a price of C$0.12 per share for gross proceeds of C$720,000.
Westhaven Gold Corp (TSXV: WHN) has entered into a financing arrangement with Franco-Nevada Corporation (TSX: FNV), a leading gold-focused royalty and streaming company.
Westhaven has agreed to sell a 2% net smelter return royalty to Franco-Nevada for US$6,000,000. The NSR applies to all of Westhaven’s claims across the Spences Bridge Gold Belt (the SBGB) in Southwestern British Columbia, Canada.
New exploration and development
Plenty of exploration and development news occurred recently, starting with Chesapeake Gold Corp. (TSXV: CKG) providing a metallurgical update for its Metates gold-silver project located in Durango State, Mexico.
The sulphide heap leaching metallurgical test programme commenced in May 2021 with a sample that had already been crushed to ½ and stored in Denver for several years.
The sample was placed in a transparent column for the oxidation phase. The column was run for 128 days and achieved an oxidation of approximately 30%. After the oxidation phase, the column was rinsed and then leached with a standard lime cyanide solution. The leach cycle was run for 90 days, like a standard oxide gold heap leach test.
Over the 90-day leach period, gold recovery reached almost 60% and silver recovery just over 50%. These results are extremely encouraging, the company says, as they show significantly higher precious metal recoveries than unoxidized samples from previous test work used to support the 2013 and 2016 prefeasibility studies (PFS).
Cypress Development Corp. (TSXV: CYP | OTCQX: CYDVF | Frankfurt: C1Z1) has achieved a significant milestone regarding its production of 99.94% lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) made from lithium-bearing claystone from the company’s 100%-owned Clayton Valley Lithium Project in Nevada, USA.
“These are excellent results for the initial iteration of testing and will be incorporated into our on-going Feasibility Study on the Project” stated Bill Willoughby, Cypress’s president and CEO.
Lithium orientated news continued with Nova Minerals’ (ASX: NVA) 37% owned Snow Lake Resources Ltd, d/b/a Snow Lake Lithium Ltd, successfully completing over 20,000m of additional drilling on the Snow Lake Lithium project in Canada.
The programme tripled the amount of drilling that can be used towards the company’s resource expansion plans scheduled to be completed this autumn.
The incremental drilling marks significant advancement of the company’s ongoing drilling campaign and accelerates Snow Lake’s path towards commercial production.
Victoria Gold Corp (TSX: VGCX) has reported the inaugural Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the Raven Gold Deposit, located approximately 15km east of the Eagle Gold Mine in the Yukon Territory, Canada.
The MRE was undertaken by the company with the assistance of Independent QP, Marc Jutras, Principal, Ginto Consulting Inc. The MRE represents the culmination of diamond drilling and surface exploration programmes conducted on the Raven target through 2021. Results from the ongoing 2022 drill programme at Raven have not been included in this maiden resource and will be incorporated into subsequent resource updates.
Drilling results
For the week’s drilling news, Galileo Mining’s (ASX: GAL) current and ongoing RC drilling programme has confirmed consistent high-grade palladium mineralization at the at the Callisto palladium- platinum-gold-rhodium-copper-nickel discovery within the company’s 100% owned Norseman project in Western Australia.
“Today’s results again confirm the extensive nature of palladium and associated metals at the Callisto discovery,” Managing Director, Brad Underwood, said.
To round things up, Venture Minerals (ASX: VMS) has discovered shallow clay hosted REE mineralization immediately adjacent to existing Tin Zones within the Mount Lindsay Project’s Tin Resources in Tasmania.
The discovery followed the re- assaying of a preliminary selection of 39 remnant pulp samples from clay zones in the hanging wall of the Reward Tin Deposit (0.5Mt @ 0.9% Tin).
“The discovery of Rare Earths at Mount Lindsay continues to demonstrate the pedigree of the geology that sits within the Mount Lindsay Project, being well located in some of the most prospective and underexplored ground in Australia and already host to a number of world=class, highly diversified deposits,” Venture’s managing director, Andrew Radonjic, said.
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