Calidus Resources says it has begun mining at its $120 million Warrawoona gold project near Marble Bar with gold production scheduled in the June quarter of next year (reports The West Australian).
The Dave Reeves-led company said yesterday the project was 50 per cent complete and continuing in line with its budget and schedule.
“Delivery of first ore to the run-of-mine pad is always an important marker in a project’s development and confirms we are on track to be Australia’s next gold producer,” Mr Reeves said.
Aspiring uranium producer Boss Energy (ASX: BOE) has confirmed its shares have been upgraded from trading on America’s over-the-counter pink open market to the OTCQB venture market under the ticker symbol “BQSSF” (reports Small Caps).
The move was made due to growing international demand for Boss equity and the fact that over 20% of its share capital is held by US investors.
It was led by global market operator MCAP Securities and investment banking firm Viriathus Capital and will see Boss retain its primary listing on the Australian Stock Exchange.
The OTC market is managed by a broker-dealer network as opposed to a centralised exchange and can involve equities, debt instruments and derivatives.
There’s more than a little exuberance around the outlook for uranium equities in 2021 (reports Stockhead).
Uranium bulls are convinced tightness in the market and the emergence of Sprott’s new yellowcake buying public trust will see prices for the nuclear fuel finally take off.
The folk at Morgan Stanley are bullish as well, so bullish it ranks alongside aluminium and met coal as its most attractive asset class.
While Morgan Stanley is cold on iron ore, the uranium outlook is hot, hot, hot.
It’s worth noting the commodities are coming from very different places.
The gold price itself had 12 months of consolidation. Now we are entering a new stage of a bull market which Barry Dawes of Martin Place Securities believes “will take it much, much higher” (reports Stockhead).
In the big scheme of things, the pullback we have seen over the past 12 months is ‘small beer’, Dawes told the Virtual Gold Conference earlier this week.
“Now everything is aligned up for gold prices in the decade to be very strong,” he says.
“The short and medium term looks very good; the long term looks very good.”
Punters should look to the big gold stocks in the US – they are the ones that matter, Dawes says.
The Sunstone management team is already credited with finding SolGold’s ‘Cascabel’ and Intrepid Mining’s ‘Tujuh Bukit’ deposits (reports Stockhead).
Both are undeniably world-class.
Sunstone’s focus is now the ‘Bramaderos’ and ‘El Palmar’ copper-gold exploration projects in Ecuador.
The cashed-up company has hit copper porphyry in its very first hole at El Palmar from surface, based on visual inspection.
The hole is currently at ~350m and will continue to a depth of at least 600m. Planning for follow-up drilling is already underway.
“We have achieved the first objective in our strategy to discover a large copper-bearing porphyry system,” managing director Malcolm Norris says.
Resource and mineral processing technology company TNG Limited (ASX: TNG) is continuing to advance the delivery and development of its wholly-owned Mount Peake vanadium-titanium-iron project in the Northern Territory (reports Small Caps).
Former OZ Minerals head of exploration Richard Holmes has recently joined Sandfire Resources to drive the next phase of the company’s growth in the discovery space (reports MiningNews).
Sandfire is planning to spend A$50-60 million on exploration this financial year after spending $64 million in FY20.
While Botswana's Kalahari Copper Belt will get the biggest proportion of funds ($23 million), the company has not given up on making another discovery in the Doolgunna region of WA and will allocate $16 million.
The DeGrussa mine will reach the end of its life next year, but Sandfire is still keen to leverage off its existing infrastructure.
The Doolgunna region will be split into two focus areas - gold in the west and deep drilling in the east.
Mineral Resources boss Chris Ellison has spoken publicly for the first time about the company’s investment in Venturex Resources (reports MiningNews).
MinRes spent A$30.8 million in February for a 19.5% stake in the copper-zinc developer, at the same time as it was announced former Northern Star Resources executive chairman Bill Beament was joining the company.
A subsequent recapitalisation, which saw Beament become the largest shareholder, diluted MinRes' interest to 13.8%.
Last week, Beament used his Diggers & Dealers presentation to rebadge the company as Develop, which will not only develop projects, but provide the industry with turnkey underground solutions.
