Morning News Bites – July 9

After yesterday announcing a 7.5c dividend due next week, Northern Star finished the day up 90c. Busiest month ever for luxury car sales and Test cricket returned overnight.

Rio Tinto has announced it will close its New Zealand Aluminium Plant – Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter. A date of August 31 2021 has been announced as the wind-down of operations. “We’re very disappointed to have played our part in delivering these savings for one of the greenest smelters in the world and to have such limited engagement from Rio Tinto. We urge Rio Tinto to seriously consider the offer for improved electricity supply and encourage them to consider what is right for Southland, for New Zealand and for their own global environmental commitments.” Said Contact Energy CEO Mike Fuge. Contract Energy are an energy supplier in New Zealand.

Black Cat Syndicate has had a busy start to the financial year with drill results from its Bulong Gold Project bringing about high grade results and approval granted for a Pit at Myhree. The results from drilling at Bulong have returned with highlights of 8m @ 26.43 g/t Au from 55m, 10m @ 5.60 g/t Au from 10m and 1m @ 12.70 g/t Au from 42m. According to MD Gareth Solly “The continued shallow, high-grade results bode well for early cashflow from potential mining operations at Myhree. These results infill the existing Resource and are among the best widths and grades to date. This is testament to the robust nature of the Myhree deposit.” While approvals for the Stage 1 Open Pit have been granted and recent drilling has seen some encouragement in the East West structure. “In addition, an important step in our objective to develop Bulong has been achieved with the full approval of the Stage 1 Open Pit at Myhree. We also saw some encouragement from an east-west structure at Myhree and 600m north of Trump north that requires follow up. RC drilling to further test and extend these areas will recommence during August 2020. In the meantime, diamond drilling of the deeper Mhyree mineralisation, is currently underway.” Mr Solly said.

New high grade gold lode has been uncovered by Classic Minerals at Kat Gap. Best results from recent drilling uncovered 4 metres grading 76.72 grams per tonne gold from 79 metres 9 metres grading 8.69 grams per tonne gold from 14 metres. CEO of Classic Minerals Dean Goodwin said “This new very high-grade intersection out into the granite is an exciting development for the Kat Gap Project. We decided to extend some of our planned drill holes west of our current drill pattern to see if further gold lodes were lurking out in the granite. We were right. Now we just have to work out what orientation this new lode is running at. We had a feeling something was out there as we had a handful of old historical drill holes along strike that had a few lower grade sniffs out in the granite. This new intersection really bodes well for our future drilling programs that will be conducted out in the granite following up the historical auger geochemical anomalies.” Kat Gap is located Kat Gap approximately 70km south-south east of the Company’s Forrestania Gold Project.

Focus Minerals has announced the new JORC 2012 Minerals Resource for the Greenfields gold deposit. A total Mineral Resource has been announced as 139,123oz (measured and indicated) That has been completed after an overhaul of the Greenfields open pit resource model and has delivered an 81% increase in Mineral Resource. Focus Minerals’ CEO, Mr Zhaoya Wang, said: “On behalf of the Board of Directors, I would like to commend the team for the diligent work in reexamining historical data of Greenfields. We look forward to what the new PFS could bring to Coolgardie.  At the same time, Focus is continuing its exploration efforts at our 100%-owned Laverton Gold Project. In line with our stated commitments, the Laverton PFS study will be completed by December 2020. The Greenfields Ore Reserve in the 2017 PFS should not be relied upon as it was built on the previous resource model. The updated PFS will be completed in early August, which will provide the updated ore reserve numbers.” Greenfields is 3.8km from Coolgardie is Western Australia.

Julimar is becoming a hive of activity for Chalice Gold and recent drill results including 3.9m @ 1.7g/t Pd, 0.4g/t Pt, 0.5g/t Au, 0.1% Ni, 0.7% Cu, 0.02% Co from 314.9m to end-of-hole  including: 10.1m @ 2.9g/t Pd, 0.6g/t Pt, 1.2g/t Au, 0.1% Ni, 1.3% Cu, 0.01% Co. These results point to a new style of PGE-copper-gold mineralisation at Gonneville. Two RC and a diamond drill are on site and continuing with a drill program at the Gonneville Intrusion. The Intrusion hosts both extensive high-grade PGE-Ni-Cu-Co zones in massive/matrix/stringer sulphides and widespread PGE mineralisation in disseminated sulphides. Current and future activities include an approx 20,000m Phase 2 RC drill program is underway utilising two rigs, a diamond drill program which will continue to step-out from known high-grade zones and test new DHEM targets, Metallurgical testwork, EM Geophysics and the ability to access approvals.