Welcome to a roundup of some of our financing, exploration, and development stories on Theassay.com over the last week. To keep up to date with all the latest headlines, subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Financing and M&A
To kick off some major financing news this week, Steppe Gold Ltd. (TSX: STGO | OTCQX: STPGF | FSE: 2J9) announced it has reached the next financing milestone for a Phase 2 Expansion at the company’s 100% owned ATO Gold Mine. This coincides with further progress on the turnkey engineering, procurement, and construction contract (EPC contract), and the second project finance draw down of US$40.4M.
Mr. Bataa Tumur-Ochir, chairman and CEO, commented, “We are extremely pleased to report solid progress on our ATO Phase 2 Expansion, and we have now fully drawn down the first US$50M of the project financing package.”
Freegold Ventures Limited (TSX: FVL) has closed its upsized brokered private placement offering for aggregate gross proceeds of C$10,000,000). Paradigm Capital acted as sole agent on the offering.
The company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering to fund exploration activities on the company’s mineral projects in Alaska, and for general working capital and corporate purposes.
New exploration and development
In exploration and development news, Elevate Uranium Limited (ASX: EL8 | OTCQX: ELVUF) has completed its inferred resource drilling programmes, data from which will be used to update the current 48Mlb eU3O8 Inferred JORC MRE for the company’s Koppies project. A new MRE is due to be released by early April. The drilling programme to increase the JORC category of the MRE has now commenced.
Elevate Uranium’s managing director, Murray Hill, commented: “The company is transitioning it’s focus at Koppies from resource growth to project advancement by increasing the JORC resource category from inferred to indicated, which will then feed into a scoping study and provide metrics on the project.
Similarly, Fission Uranium Corp. (TSX: FCU) has completed its 2024 exploration drill programme at its PLS high-grade uranium project, in the Athabasca Basin region of Saskatchewan, Canada.
Over to heavy rare earths, with Ionic Rare Earths Limited (ASX: IXR) announcing the continuous production of high purity, recycled magnet rare earth oxides (REOs) has commenced at scale on the demonstration plant at Ionic Technologies International Ltd’s Belfast facility in the UK.
Ionic Technologies is a global first mover in the recycling of Neodymium-Iron-Boron (NdFeB) permanent magnets to high purity separated magnet rare earth oxides (REOs) – enabling the creation of sustainable, traceable, and sovereign rare earth supply chains.
Over in Ethiopia, KEFI Gold and Copper (AIM: KEFI) has reported further positive developments at the company’s high-grade Tulu Kapi Gold Project in Ethiopia as it prepares for full launch in H1 2024.
As previously reported, all of the required development budget of US$320M has been sourced at the subsidiary level. Following the final approvals from the lead-bank, all other parties triggered their formal approval processes which are now all advancing, notably including progress with both the co-lending bank and the local equity-capital investors.
Drilling results
For drilling results, Azure Minerals Limited’s (ASX: AZS) recent assay results in Target Area 3 (TA3) on the company’s Andover Project confirm consistent thickness and grade of the lithium mineralization within the AP0004 and AP0002 pegmatites. The company explains that this confirms a major lithium-mineralized system is present at TA3, and that Andover has the potential to be a lithium project of global significance.
Similarly, St George Mining Limited (ASX: SGQ) announced assay results from a recent REE drill programme completed at the company’s Destiny Project, in the Eastern Goldfields region of Western Australia.
The follow-up drill programme completed earlier this month has successfully confirmed further continuity of the clay-hosted REE discovery announced by St George in December 2023.
“We are very pleased with the results of our follow-up drilling programme which has significantly expanded the lateral continuity of the rare earths mineralization footprint at Destiny.” Said John Prineas, executive chairman.
Other company news
Finally, in other company news, American Lithium Corp. (TSXV:LI | Nasdaq: AMLI | Frankfurt:5LA1) has appointed the former Deputy Minister of Mines, Augusto Cauti, as a strategic corporate advisor in relation to its Peruvian operations.
Mr. Augusto Cauti is a seasoned mining executive who served as Deputy Minister of Mines of Peru in 2019-2020. He was previously an executive director of the Australia-Peru Chamber of Commerce (2015-2019) and general counsel for Pan American Silver Peru (2006-2013).
