Welcome to our pick of mining investment, exploration, and development news from the last seven days on Theassay.com. To keep up to date with all the latest headlines, subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Financing
We kick off with news that Red 5 (ASX: RED) has received firm commitments for a A$60M, two-tranche placement comprising the issue of 375 million new fully-paid ordinary shares.
The placement funds will primarily support the ramp-up of its King of the Hills gold mine in Western Australia, Australia’s newest major gold mine.
“We are delighted with the support received for the placement and the company is also pleased to offer existing eligible shareholders on the record date the opportunity to subscribe under a share purchase plan at the same price as the placement,” said managing director, Mark Williams.
There was also capital raising news from nickel developer Horizonte Minerals (AIM: HZM | TSX: HZM), which has successfully completed an oversubscribed fundraise for £70.5M.
Following significant institutional demand in the bookbuild from existing and new investors, Horizonte’s board decided to upsize the placing, increasing the gross proceeds from approximately £61.7M to £70.5M.
Jeremy Martin, Horizonte’s CEO, said “I would like to thank all existing shareholders for their continued support and welcome our new shareholders as we work towards first production at Araguaia in Q1 2024 and in parallel progress feasibility work at Vermelho.”
Exploration and development
In Brazil, Australian outfit Centaurus Metals (ASX: CTM) has reported strong progress with its ongoing metallurgical testwork and other key work streams being progressed as part of the ongoing Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) on its 100%-owned Jaguar Nickel Sulphide Project in the northeast of the country.
Centaurus Metals’ managing director, Darren Gordon, said the additional time being taken to finalize the DFS would allow it to take advantage of enhancements to the POX process flowsheet and optimize capital and operating costs.
“We remain focused on delivering a project capable of supplying high-quality battery-grade nickel sulphate directly into the rapidly expanding EV market globally,” he said.
“The economic rationale for value-adding in Brazil remains compelling, especially where the product can be delivered with an extremely low-emission footprint – which we know we can achieve at Jaguar.”
Further north, in New Mexico, U.S., Summa Silver (TSXV: SSVR | OTCQX: SSVRF | Frankfurt: 48X) has resumed exploration drilling at its high-grade Mogollon silver project near Silver City, New Mexico.
The company has stated that the consolidated mine target represents only 1% of the total vein and structure strike length present on the project, which features numerous poorly explored to completely unexplored targets.
“The Mogollon project continues to represent a rare American discovery opportunity that we are well positioned to systematically advance,” said CEO Galen McNamara.
“Our work utilizes a modern best practice approach with key pillars that focus on environmental stewardship, community engagement and successful exploration. The team is very much looking forward to following up on the drilling already completed and to aggressively pursuing the growth of the mineralized zone around the Consolidated Mine.”
In Western Australia, St George Mining (ASX: SGQ) has identified promising new nickel targets at its flagship Mt Alexander Project.
The company’s executive chairman, John Prineas, said the company is excited at the latest highly prospective nickel targets identified by the FLEM and looks forward to testing them with drilling later this quarter.
“The prospectivity of the key conductive anomaly identified by the earlier moving loop ARMIT EM survey has been upgraded. The FLEM data indicates a larger and more conductive anomaly, referred to as P1 that has a geophysical signature consistent with massive sulphides,” he said.
“We look forward to an exciting drill programme in Q4 2022 that will test both these new nickel targets as well as the emerging lithium prospects at Mt Alexander.”
Drilling results
In drilling news, Siren Gold (ASX: SNG) has had further success in confirming the untapped potential on its Auld Creek Prospect in New Zealand.
Trench intersections include; 6m @ 8.9g/t Au, 4.4% Sb (15.8g/t AuEq), 4.0m @ 4.4g/t Au, 0.36% Sb (4.6g/t AuEq) and 1.5m @ 17.1g/t Au, 9%Sb (31.1g/t AuEq).
Diamond drill hole intersections include; 12m @ 4.1g/t, 2.9% Sb (8.7g/t AuEq) and 4.5m @ 3.0g/t Au, 3.2% Sb (8.1 g/t AuEq).
The Auld Creek Prospect is contained within Siren’s Golden Point exploration permit and is situated between the highly productive Globe Progress mine, which historically produced 418koz @ 12.2g/t Au, and the Crushington group of mines that produced 515koz @ 16.3 g/t Au.
Canadian company Tudor Gold (TSXV: TUD) has received further positive drill results for the 2022 exploration programme at Treaty Creek, located in the heart of the Golden Triangle of north-western British Columbia.
“We are very pleased to confirm that our step-out and in-fill drilling is progressing extremely well,” said president and CEO, Ken Konkin, said.
“We continue to intersect higher gold values within broad mineralized envelopes within the northern aspect of the Goldstorm Deposit.
“Both 300H and CS600 domains yield very consistent gold mineralization with continued strong copper grades observed throughout the CS600 domain.”
Also in the news
To round things up, we learnt that Uganda-focused Ionic Rare Earths (ASX: IXR) has been accepted as a participant member of the United Nations Global Compact.
The company says that in a move to consolidate environmental, social and governance transparency, and to act on the United Nations “Agenda 2030”, Ionic will now begin to report on progress of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“Ionic is committed to establishing a sustainable business which is working towards solving complex global critical raw materials supply challenges,” said Tim Harrison, Ionic Rare Earth’s managing director.
“Our strategy is to provide global customers with an alternative, sustainable supply of magnet and heavy rare earth elements critical to driving a Net-Zero Carbon world.
“Becoming a UN Global Compact participant demonstrates our commitment to shaping Agenda 2030,” he said.
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