The Advitech Group is celebrating its 30^th year, delivering science, technology, engineering, mathematics and manufacturing (STEM&M) solutions to industry – locally, nationally and internationally. Supporting clients with the planning and development of next generation technologies, has meant significant advancements in safety, environmental management and productivity outcomes for business.

Driving technical innovation and excellence across mining, manufacturing, construction, infrastructure, government and the arts, The Group’s work has been instrumental in reducing workplace risk and safety incidents.“It’s remarkable how much has changed since 1988, we are very proud of the risk and safety work we have done for clients, potentially saving lives, reducing production downtime and minimising financial loss for business,” Advitech Group Executive Chairman Larry Platt said.

With its beginnings in servicing local heavy industry, The Group is now a collective of five complementary businesses -Advitech, Acubis, Hushpak, Novecom, and Simulation Modelling Services (SMS).  The businesses offer clients a breadth of expertise across consulting engineering, safety and risk assessments, environmental consulting, sensor-based data management, remote communication systems, noise control systems and simulation modelling technologies.

“We decided to move beyond being strictly consulting, expanding sideways and vertically to include broader technical services and the manufacturing of niche products in complementary markets and the Advitech Group was born,” said Mr Platt.

The Group attributes its success to a client driven business model, “It was once sufficient to simply create and deliver a product,” Mr Platt explained.“We talk to our customers, understandtheir needs and challenges, then customise a solution – manufacture it, install it, maintain it and analyse the data output. Over time our customers have started to demand more of an end-to-end service and we’ve adapted and expanded to provide exactly that.” The Group’s team of specialists are focused on designing systems and technologies that are agile, adaptive and respond to client and industry needs.

The Advitech Group continues to explore better ways of thinking and doing, providing the technical skills and resources required to make Australia the smarter country.

Mr Platt is also focused on making Newcastle the smarter city. In 2017, he was appointed to the City of Newcastle’s Smart and Innovative Cities Committee to help enhance Newcastle’s strategic local and global position.

Mines and Petroleum Minister Bill Johnston announced the successful applicants for Round 18 of the popular Exploration Incentive Scheme (EIS) co-funded drilling program.

Round 18 will provide $5.3 million to 40 projects to be drilled in 2019.

The round attracted 73 applications – an increase of about 16 per cent on the previous round, which indicates a rise in exploration activities in Western Australia.

The successful applicants have projects across the State and several have used EIS precompetitive science to refine drilling targets in the Nullarbor.

The co-funding will support exploration for gold, base metals, petroleum, nickel, lithium, rare earth elements, potash and diamonds.

Recent EIS successes include Bellevue Gold Mining’s gold lode north of Leinster and Independence Group’s significant copper-zinc drilling intercept at Fraser Range, north-east of Esperance. The next round for co-funded applications will open in February 2019.

For more information, visit http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/Geological-Survey/EIS-Government-co-funded-1433.aspx

Diversified mining services company Ausdrill Limited ( ASX: ASL) is pleased to announce its recently acquired subsidiary, leading hard-rock underground miner Barminco, has been awarded an underground mining services contract at the Rampura Agucha Mine in India from Hindustan Zinc Limited (HZL) worth approximately $100 million.

Ausdrill Managing Director, Mark Norwell, said: “This continuation of services at Rampura Agucha is further endorsement of the Barminco acquisition and the professional service our businesses have been providing to our customers.”

Barminco has operated at the Rampura Agucha Mine for HZL, a subsidiary of Vedanta Limited, since late 2016. The new underground mining services contract is for a three and a half year term, subject to review and mutual agreement of rates after the first year. The scope of work includes the extension of development works that were being provided under a recently completed contract, plus the addition of production work in the Barminco-developed area of the mine.

Under the contract, HZL will provide capital equipment and consumables. Barminco will commence work immediately.

Barminco Chief Executive Officer, Paul Muller, said: “We are very pleased to have been awarded a contract that extends our operations at the Rampura Agucha mine with an expanded scope to include production works. We look forward to deepening the relationship we have built with Hindustan Zinc over the past few years by delivering on this extended scope of works both safely and efficiently.”

HIGHLIGHTS:

• Greenvale Mineral Resource tonnes increased by 63.2%
• Lucknow Mineral Resource tonnes increased by 94.6%
• Grade maintained across both deposits, with additional Mineral Resource tonnages boosting contained metal quantities for the project
• Expanded Mineral Resource to support longer Life of Mine
• Revised Mineral Resource expected to boost optimised BFS potential and
• increase financial outcomes for Sconi project

Advanced battery materials developer Australian Mines Limited (“Australian Mines” or “the Company”) (Australia ASX: AUZ; USA OTCQB: AMSLF; Frankfurt Stock Exchange: MJH) is pleased to announce an updated Mineral Resource estimate for the Company’s 100%-owned Sconi Cobalt-Nickel-Scandium Project in North Queensland, with the new estimation anticipated to result in substantial flow-through benefits to the Project’s overall development economics.

The results from the recent expansion drilling program have delineated consistent high grade nickel and cobalt zones across the Project area, with some assays from the program exceeding the tenor of results previously returned across the historic project, which have been the subject of evaluation for about half a century.

The Greenvale nickel deposit’s in-situ material now stands at 24.40 million tonnes, up 63.2% from 14.95 million tonnes in the previous estimate; and the adjacent Lucknow deposit’s material now stands at 14.62 million tonnes, up 94.6% from 7.51 million tonnes previously.

This re-estimation of the Sconi Mineral Resource was prepared by leading resource consultant group CSA Global, which completed a detailed review of previous and recent exploration data to estimate the new Mineral Resource, including Resource modelling information derived from the Company’s base-case Bankable Feasibility Study (BFS).

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The Board of Cazaly Resources Limited (“Cazaly” or “the Company”)(ASX: CAZ) is pleased to announce the completion of a placement to professional and sophisticated investors to raise gross proceeds of $750,000. The issue price of the fully paid ordinary shares will be $0.025 per share and will include one free option (exercisable at $0.05 on or before 31 March 2021) issued on a one for two basis.

A total of 30m shares and 15m options will be issued under the placement from the Company’s available issuing capacity under ASX Listing Rules 7.1 (9.42m) and 7.1A (20.58m). It should be noted that Mr Terry Gardiner, a Director, will participate in the placement. Shareholder approval will be required before any shares and options can be issued to Mr Gardiner.

The funds raised will enable the Company to move forward with the update of various sections and costings of the Definitive Feasibility Study on the Parker Range Iron Ore project, planned exploration work on its other projects in Namibia and Australia and for working capital requirements.

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Oxamii, a startup based in Adelaide, South Australia, has developed a system to make it easier for owners of solar arrays producing a minimum of 200 kilowatts to sell power on the spot market.

Founders Aaron Yew, Luke Marshall and Ray Carclaw have secured a number of investors for the online platform and plan to launch before July.

Yew said their aim was to allow customers to be more connected to their energy supplier, such as a famer with a large solar array.

“Up until now customers haven’t been able to have a relationship with their generator or have a relationship with their energy. The system now is basically choosing a retailer and receive a bill,” Yew said.

Their platform connects buyers and purchasers by making Oxamii the agent that monitors energy flows, calculates bills and manages loads for its customers.

Oxamii is targeting farmers who have existing solar energy they want to sell on the market, or farmers looking at gaining a second source of income through establishing a solar farm.

The platform allows producers to sell electricity inside Australia’s National Electricity Market (NEM) to clients at a fixed rate through a power purchase agreement (PAA) – first developed by Google on a multinational level.

The PPA would offer stability and security for both parties against the constantly fluctuating NEM spot market prices.

“We’re going to be partnering with a retailer and we’re going to white label their retail licence,” Yew said.

“A customer would be buying energy from the generator at a fixed-price, so it would be exactly like buying from AGL on a certain tariff. The difference would be the generator.”

Yew said that South Australian producers generating 100kW or more can apply for Large Generation Certificates and access the spot market, while generators producing between 5MW and 30MW can apply for a Small Generator Aggregator’s license.

“The Small Generator Aggregators licence is designed for generators that can sell directly into the spot market. It was designed for these small-scale solar farms to easily sell into the spot market.

“The problem with selling into the spot market is that the prices are variable. That’s why the Small Generator Aggregators licence hasn’t taken off. I think only eight of these licenses have been given out from last year. The uptake wasn’t very big at all.”

Oxamii’s retail licence also offers financial security and a market to sell renewable energy.

Having a PPA allows medium and small-scale farmers to approach a bank for funds to establish a solar array.

Yew said the software would help businesses of any size participate in renewable energy.

“Without Oxamii, small businesses and medium-sized businesses wouldn’t have access to the same mechanisms these multinationals have.

“No companies in Australia are currently allowing businesses to buy this kind of renewable energy from small scale farmers.”

“This also allows them to oversize their solar farms and they can sell any excess electricity directly to other customers.”

South Australia leads the nation in the uptake of wind energy and rooftop solar with renewable sources accounting for more than 50 per cent of the electricity generated in the state.

Yew aims to keep the renewable energy local to help the economy and change the way people think about green energy by making it personal.

“We want to promote local energy with the idea that if the energy is generated locally and bought locally then that money stays within the economy,” he said.

“What our software does is that it allows customers to choose a preference of who they want to buy their energy from.

“There might be a preference of say the local farmer, but then there might be a sports club, or it might be a church. Our platform will help tell these compelling stories, which will allow customers to say ‘you know what? I want to support that farmer’.”

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HIGHLIGHTS

• Release of Updated Definitive Feasibility Study (“Updated DFS”) resulting in increased gold production and mine life following resource extensions to the south
• Orient Shear exploration results – shallow RC programme intersected high grade mineralisation beneath old open pits on the Orient Shear 200m west of The Woodley’s Resource, including;
  • 1.0m @ 29.6g/t Au from 68m
  • 1.0m @ 29.1g/t Au from 61m
  • 1.0m @ 25.0g/t Au from 57m
• Project finance and approvals work has been progressed during the quarter
• During the quarter the Company commenced the process of optimising the mine design and schedule, with the aim of reducing the required working capital

OVERVIEW

EganStreet Resources Limited (ASX: EGA, EganStreet or the Company) continued to make progress during the March 2019 Quarter, towards its goal of developing a new high-grade gold operation at its 100%- owned Rothsay Gold Project in WA, (Rothsay or the Project).

The key highlight of the March Quarter was the release of the Updated DFS during February 2019. The Updated DFS was released following a new mine design based on the November 2018 Mineral Resource Estimate (November 2018 MRE). The Updated DFS is based on processing 1.3Mt at an average grade of 7.2 g/t Au for approximately 289,000oz of gold production (up from 1.2Mt at 6.9 g/t Au for 250,000oz as stated in the July 2018 DFS).

During February 2019, the Company released encouraging results from the Orient Shear RC programme which was completed during the December 2018 Quarter. Results indicate that the mineralisation on the Orient Shear is more extensive than previously thought with grades of up to 34.6g/t Au intersected along 800m strike on the Orient Shear, less than 200 metres west of the main Woodley’s Resource.

“The drilling programme at Orient demonstrated the significant prospectivity of the Rothsay Project and the strong potential to define additional resources in satellite mining areas surrounding the proposed location of the main decline and processing plant,” EganStreet Managing Director Marc Ducler said.

“Our current focus remains on obtaining project development funding and then moving to make Rothsay a producing gold mine, but we clearly have a large number of targets for future investigation which are likely to be located close to mine access infrastructure.”

The Company continued to progress approvals, permitting and project financing discussions for Rothsay during the Quarter, putting it in a strong position to make a Final Investment Decision (FID) and commence construction of a standalone mining and processing operation.

• A five hole, 4C (four inch) core drill program is currently underway at QEM’s flagship Julia Creek vanadium / oil shale project, located in North Western Queensland, Australia.
• The drill program is designed as an infill program to provide data on drill spacing between existing holes and will assist with increasing confidence in the geological model.
• The drill program is intended to provide approximately 300kg of bulk ore material for planned processing studies.

QEM Limited (“QEM”, the “Company”) (ASX:QEM) is pleased to announce that it has commenced a 5 hole drill program on its flagship Julia Creek vanadium / oil shale project, covering 496km² in the Julia Creek area of North Western Queensland, Australia. The program is a five hole, 4C (four inch), core drill program and the core recovered will be used to advance processing studies intended to optimise the extraction of vanadium and potentially hydrocarbons. Results from the drill program will also be input into the geological model, with the objective of increasing the geological confidence of the deposit.

As announced on 7 May 2019, QEM undertook a 26km 2D seismic program to survey the geological structure of the seams across the project area, with data also being input into the geological model, again with the aim of increasing the geological confidence of the deposit. The results from the drill program and the seismic data gathered will play an important role in the Company’s plans to update the geological resource, as well as the assessment of potential mine designs and also in the process of planning the Pre-feasibility study for the Julia Creek project. It is anticipated that the final drilling data results after assays, will be completed by July 2019.

QEM Limited Executive Director David Fitch commented: “With the seismic survey recently being completed, the Company is progressing with the current drill program. Similarly to the seismic survey, the current drill program will provide valuable data which will be input into the geological model, which well positions the Company in the further development of this exciting opportunity”.

Highlights:

• Conductive brines with lithium values up to 480 mg/L obtained from upper sections of hole at approximately 186m depth at Lake’s Cauchari Lithium Brine Project, Argentina.
• Results compare favourably to similar lithium brine horizons in publicly available results from adjoining pre-production areas under development. This clearly demonstrates that Lake is drilling in the same basin with similar brines and thus better results are anticipated at depth.
• Diamond drill rig now below 255m having passed a challenging section of high-pressure fluids.
• The target is a ~350-450m sand horizon which has recorded higher lithium values and fluid flows in the adjoining project.

Argentine-focused lithium exploration and project development company Lake Resources NL (ASX: LKE) announced today positive drilling results at Lake’s 100% owned Cauchari Lithium Brine Project in Argentina that compare favourably with adjoining major projects, with initial lithium results from conductive brines sampled in the upper section of the drillhole at around 186m depth (Figures 1-4).

Conductive brines with lithium values up to 480 mg/L were returned from a depth of 186m with low Mg/Li ratios. These results echo similar lithium brine horizons in the upper sections of drillholes reported from the adjoining pre-production area of Ganfeng/Lithium Americas (LAC) and Advantage Lithium (AAL)/ Orocobre joint venture. Lake is drilling in the same basin with similar brines and therefore better results are anticipated at depth.

The closest drillhole in the Advantage Lithium (AAL)/ Orocobre joint venture is CAU15D, screened from 6-204m with 450mg/L lithium, located approximately 350m from Lake’s drilling area (refer Orocobre announcement and Advantage Lithium announcement 24/04/19). The closest drillhole in the Ganfeng/Lithium Americas (LAC) joint venture is PE-09, with 34 metres at 741 mg/L Lithium from 164m depth, located approximately 500m from Lake’s drilling area.

These are accredited results however larger samples will be collected once the hole is completed. The diamond drill rig is now below 255m having passed a challenging section of high fluid pressures and sands around 230m. Lake’s technical team is encouraged that drilling is through this section which has previously caused drilling problems.

The current hole is targeting a sand horizon estimated between 350-450m which has recorded higher lithium values and fluid flows in the adjoining project. Current drilling aims to unlock value from this rapidly emerging project, located immediately adjacent to a world-class brine project in pre-production in the Lithium Triangle, approximately 500m from the Ganfeng/Lithium Americas Cauchari project.

Management Commentary

Lake Resources Managing Director Steve Promnitz said:

“This is a watershed moment for Lake, confirming proof of concept for our Cauchari project and highlighting its potential to replicate the success of similar projects in the same basin.

“The results vindicate our exploration thesis that the basin is fault-bonded and extends beneath thin alluvial cover, vindicating our decision to persist with drilling despite difficult conditions to deliver expected high-grade lithium values.

“Notably, the results compare very favorably to those at adjoining major pre-development projects subject to multi-billion dollar transactions. We look forward to reaching our targeted depths of between 350-450m and reporting on the lithium values from conductive brines at these deeper levels.”

Meanwhile, Lake is continuing to advance discussions with potential project partners in Asia and North America regarding development funding, with the aim of advancing towards production as quickly as possible.

Mr Promnitz added: “With a major project under development in the adjoining leases, these results reaffirm Cauchari’s potential to become a highly valuable project for Lake Resources, adding to our portfolio of wholly owned projects located in the heart of the Lithium Triangle.”

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Queensland Exploration | Almost $1 million in state-funded exploration grants have been awarded to help explorers discover new economy minerals and future jobs in North West Queensland.

Mines Minister Dr Anthony Lynham said a record number of exploration companies had taken up the Palaszczuk Government’s call to hunt for the minerals needed for advanced electronics and renewable technologies.

“From an unprecedented 61 bids, seven projects have been awarded $965,000 to help open up the untapped minerals bounty around Mount Isa, Cloncurry, Julia Creek, and Georgetown,” he said.  

“Exploration is the essential first step for any mining endeavour, and our investment has encouraged industry to search for cobalt and rare earth minerals needed for wind turbines, generators and batteries.” 

Dr Lynham said the data collected from the projects would be made available free from January 2021 via the government’s geological database, to encourage further exploration and mining investment in Queensland. 

“Everything learned will be shared with the whole industry, which could lead to further exploration and more mineral mines, jobs and exports for Queensland,” he said.

The following projects will be up and running ASAP with activities to be completed by the end of May 2020:

• Chinova Resources Pty Ltd has been awarded $200,000 to re-analyse existing soil samples to investigate if there are any new economy minerals south of Cloncurry.
• Mulga Minerals subsidiary of Hammer Metals Ltd have been awarded $193,000 to drill an area between Mount Isa and Cloncurry to obtain samples of rocks expected to contain new economy minerals. 
• VECCO Industrial Pty Ltd has been awarded $160,000 to re-analyse drill core samples to investigate if there are any new economy minerals north of Julia Creek.
• Transition Resources Pty Ltd has been awarded $112,000 to re-analyse existing soil and drill samples to help determine the distribution, quantity and quality of new economy minerals in the Cloncurry area.
• SMA Mining Pty Ltd has been awarded $98,000 to drill to confirm if there is enough lithium mineralisation in the Georgetown District to suggest a mine could be economically viable.
• Moho Resources Ltd has been awarded $112,000 to test groundwater from existing water bores and drill holes for indicators of New Economy Minerals south of Croydon.
• Mt Dockerell Mining Pty Ltd subsidiary of Hammer Metals Ltd has been awarded $90,000 to conduct an electromagnetic survey to help define the extent of new economy mineral occurrence in the region south east of Mount Isa.

“In addition to traditional drilling, these innovative projects will utilise geophysics, geochemistry, hydrogeochemistry, and data analytics,” Dr Lynham said.

“This funding is a practical way to help industry test out new technologies while searching for Queensland’s future projects and jobs.”  

Hammer Metals Ltd Managing Director Dan Thomas said the government’s grants were an invaluable contribution to junior explorers.

“The ability for these programs to fund specific areas of interest and collaboration is critical in advancing the mineral prospects across Queensland,” he said.

“Hammer’s ground in particular holds great promise for a number of the identified critical minerals and whilst we have recognised and promoted this potential, the Collaborative Exploration Initiative grants will assist immensely in accelerating Hammer’s efforts in exploring for these minerals.”

The funding is the first part of $3.5 million in industry grants to be delivered over five years under the state’s $13.8 million New Economy Minerals Initiative.

Dr Lynham said exploration spending and employment in mineral mining was booming in Queensland.

“Jobs in mineral mining soared by 10.7 per cent last year, with 18,139 people employed in the industry,” he said.

“A total of $175 million was spent exploring for minerals in Queensland, including $61 million invested in copper exploration, and $68 million in gold.

“There’s no doubt the resources sector is already a massive contributor to Queensland’s regional economies and this investment will drive the evolution of projects and jobs to deliver the minerals of the future.”

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