Michael Philipps

American West Metals has pumped up the mineral resource at its West Desert project in Utah with nearly 24 million ounces of indium and 119,000 gold ounces and says it has the only indium deposit in the United States. The updated JORC resource adds to the existing 1.3 million tonnes of zinc, 49,000 tonnes of copper and 10 million ounces of silver at the project.

Quantum Graphite has outlined an internal rate of return of almost 50 per cent and a net present value of more than $497 million following a financial update of its Uley 2 graphite project in South Australia. The independent assessment identified that doubling the mill throughput up to 1.2 million tonnes a year would lift production up to 100,000 dry metric tonnes of flake graphite.

Xanadu Mines has tabled a staggering resource estimate upgrade for its Kharmagtai copper-gold project in Mongolia, jumping to 1.3 billion tonnes with 3.4 million tonnes of contained copper and 8.5 million gold ounces. The updated estimate represents a 12 per cent increase in tonnes, a 15 per cent surge in contained copper and a 9 per cent jump in contained gold.

Surefire Resources has unveiled a pre-tax net present value of $1.7 billion for its Victory Bore vanadium project in WA’s Mid West region following the release of a prefeasibility study into the operation. The company is predicting a 42.2 per cent pre-tax internal rate of return, a mine life of 24 years with a payback of 2.4 years and a capital cost of $767 million.

This week’s Bulls N’ Bears profiled ASX runner is… Plenti Group. Its shares more than doubled this week to join fellow runners Intelicare, Euro Manganese and LBT Innovations.

The first $4.7 million chapter has been written in Auric Mining’s remarkable money story at its humble Jeffreys Find gold mine near Norseman in Western Australia that many others would have ignored. Auric has produced more than 9700 ounces during two mining campaigns with joint venture partner BML Ventures, returning a total gold revenue of $29.28 million for the first stage of the two-year project.

White Cliff Minerals believes its Lake Johnston South project is highly-prospective for spodumene-bearing pegmatites following a review into the operation west of Norseman in Western Australia’s Goldfields region. Lake Johnston South consists of 13 exploration licenses totalling 1874 square kilometres adjacent to and along strike from recent large-scale discoveries of spodumene-bearing pegmatites by Charger Metals and TG Metals.

Aurum Resources is set to take its gold search to a new continent after signing a binding agreement to acquire PlusOr Global, which holds the rights to earn into the Boundiali gold project in Côte d’Ivoire. The project on the southern coast of West Africa covers two contiguous granted exploration permits within Côte d’Ivoire's prospective Boundiali greenstone belt.

American West Metals has confirmed outstanding grades of 38.2 per cent copper and 30.87 per cent zinc from geochemical sampling at the Tempest prospect that forms part of its greater Storm project in Canada. The results came from surface gossan rocks at the underexplored site, which have been mapped for more than 4km and are about 40km south of copper targets drilled earlier this year.