Welcome to our roundup of some of the most prominent mining investment, exploration, and development stories on Theassay.com from the last week.
Financing news
We start with First Mining Gold Corp. (TSX: FF) closing the final tranche of its upsized non-brokered private placement. Together with the funds received by the company in the first tranche of the offering, First Mining raised approximately C$5.3M in total gross proceeds across the two tranches of the offering.
The offering of common shares of the company qualify as flow-through shares for the purposes of the Income Tax Act (Canada).
The gross proceeds raised from the sale of the Flow-Through Shares under the offering will be used to fund exploration programmes that qualify as “Canadian Exploration Expenses” (CEE) and “flow-through mining expenditures”, as those terms are defined in the Income Tax Act (Canada).
Ionic Rare Earths Ltd’s (ASX: IXR) 100% subsidiary, Seren Technologies, has been granted £1.72M from the UK government’s Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC).
Ionic completed the acquisition of SerenTech on 22 April 2022. The APC is a non-profit organization that facilitates funding to UK based research and development projects developing low-carbon emission powertrain technologies, funded by the UK Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and managed by Innovate UK.
“This is a tremendous endorsement from the UK government and the APC on the potential for scaling our technology offering from SerenTech,” Ionic’s managing director, Tim Harrison, said.
New exploration and development
There was plenty of new exploration and development news, starting with Freeman Gold Corp. (TSXV: FMAN) successfully completing its Phase II diamond drill programme consisting of 12,168m in 50 holes as part of a resource expansion programme at its 100% owned Lemhi Gold Deposit, Idaho, U.S.
A total of 46 of these drill holes were designed to test mineralization on strike to the east and west of the known deposit (expansion holes) and four were infill holes in known areas to improve the resource confidence in zones where only historical drill holes exist. An additional five holes totalling 721m were drilled at the newly discovered Beauty zone.
Kairos Minerals (ASX: KAI) is ready to commence drilling at its Lucky Sump Prospect in Western Australia.
Previous work there obtained spodumene pegmatite samples grading up to 1.91% Li2O have been discovered during routine earthmoving activities next to the flagship Mt York Gold Deposit.
“The initial results from Lucky Sump were outstanding so we are eagerly awaiting this drilling programme,” managing director, Dr Peter Turner, said.
St George Mining Ltd (ASX: SGQ) has identified significant exploration potential for lithium pegmatite mineralization extending south from its high-grade Mt Alexander Ni-Cu-PGE Project located in the north-eastern Goldfields of Western Australia.
“The results from our initial field work to scope the lithium potential at Mt Alexander are very encouraging and support a compelling case to accelerate exploration for lithium pegmatite mineralization,” said John Prineas, the company’s executive chairman.
“We will advance the lithium exploration in tandem with drill testing several very promising, recently identified nickel targets announced on 1 September,” he added.
Tudor Gold Corp. (TSXV: TUD) has received a positive sixth set of drill results for the 2022 exploration programme at its flagship property, Treaty Creek, located in the heart of the Golden Triangle of north-western British Columbia.
“We are extremely pleased to announce the on-going success of the step-out drilling at our Goldstorm Deposit,” president and CEO, Ken Konkin, said.
Drilling results
In drilling news, we heard that Revival Gold Inc. (TSXV: RVG | OTCQX: RVLGF) has announced initial results from the company’s 2022 drilling programme and provided an update on exploration at its Beartrack-Arnett Gold Project, located in Idaho, U.S.
Three core holes targeting the depth extension of mineralization at the company’s Beartrack-Arnett project have been completed in the 2022 programme: two in the Joss area and one in the South Pit area. Hole BT22-241D in the Joss area intersected 6.2 g/t gold over 14.2m within 3.6 g/t gold over 51.5m approximately 100m below hole BT18-220D, the most southerly intersection at Joss to-date (8.84 g/t gold over 3.0m within 1.79 g/t gold over 38.8m).
Finally, Victoria Gold Corp. (TSX: VGCX) has had further success with its Eagle exploration drilling programme in Canada.
The programme took place from December 2021 through May 2022 and continued the success of the 2021 Eagle Deep drilling programme.
The 2022 programme focused on key areas for the potential expansion of the Eagle Gold deposit to the west of the existing Eagle Gold pit. In total, 10,342m of diamond drilling in 23 drill holes (average depth of 450m) have added approximately 500m of mineralized strike length from the current Eagle pit boundary.
Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to subscribe to The Assay Weekly newsletter.
