It was a busy news day and AFC Energy (LON:AFC) revealed it had commissioned and commenced operation of its KORE fuel cell system at its site in Stade, Germany, and is on target to for full commercial scale electricity output late this year.
Chief executive Adam Bond hailed the landmark as “one of the proudest moments in AFC’s history”.
In fact, it is the culmination of a decade’s investment and development work on the revolutionary fuel cell system, which generates power using surplus hydrogen from chemical production.
Elsewhere, a resource estimate for ECR Minerals' (LON:ECR) Philippines project moved a step closer - as it revealed it had raised £250,000 before costs through a placing and subscription.
It said it had received firm commitments for around 555.5mln shares at 0.045 pence each.
The proceeds will go towards an initial NI43-101 compliant resource estimate and technical report for the Itogon gold project and for general corporate purposes.
Also in resources, Fox Marble (LON:FOX) shares tumbled after the company warned delays have slowed revenue growth but chief executive Chris Gilbert had some comforting words for shareholders.
First half revenues clocked in at €110k, which was lower than expected due to slower than expected completion of deliveries on its order books. The company suffered delays in accessing the new Malasheva quarry while progress in the development of its Sivec quarries in Macedonia was not as rapid as hoped.
The new Malasheva quarry (Malasheva 2) contains Illyric off-white marble that is particularly popular in North America, and Fox Marble expects to start shipping marble from this quarry in the second half of the year as it is now on the verge of gaining access to the site.
Ormonde Mining (LON:ORM) announced the sudden death of Kerr Anderson, the tungsten group’s managing director for the past 14 years.
Mike Donoghue, chairman, paid tribute to Anderson saying he had been instrumental in leading the company over the past 14 years from a greenfield explorer to becoming a mining company.
“On behalf of the board and staff of Ormonde I would like to express our deep sadness on his death, and express our sincere condolences to his family and friends.
Also today, Sunrise Resources (LON:SRES) expects to start drilling Bay State silver project in Nevada this month after permitting came through.
Contractor bids are being reviewed it said with the US Bureau of Land Management allowing Sunrise to construct up to 16 drill pads.
Patrick Cheetham, executive chairman told investors: “We believe that the permit now in place will cover sufficient phased drilling to meet our next objective which is to define a JORC compliant mineral resource estimate."
Toronto- listed Mkango Resources (CVE:MKA) told investors it had brought in C$750,000 in the first tranche of its previously announced C$1.5mln private placing to further advance its Songwe rare earths project in Malawi.
The plan is to deploy the new money directly into Songwe, specifically on developing the process sheet, on technical and product marketing expenditures, on an environmental, social and health impact assessment - key parts of the feasibility study - and on other on-going costs in Malawi.
The firm said 30 million units were issued at C$025 per unit for gross cash proceeds of C$750,000.
Elsewhere, Sirius Minerals (LON:SXX) has confirmed that it has received around £9.2mln from the exercise of share warrants issued last year.
Since June 29, some 51.25mln shares have been issued to investors who had the warrants following a share placing in March 2014, the company revealed.
The warrants were issued with an exercise price of 18p, which was a 50% premium to the March 2014 placing price.
Since receiving planning approval for the York Potash project, awarded at the start of July, Sirius Minerals shares rose as high as 29.5p. Shares are now at 17.25p.
Bushveld Minerals (LON:BMN) shares added over 3% to 4.15p as it updated on its takeover of Aussie- listed Lemur Resources (ASX:LMR), sayingh as at July 31, it had an interest in 91.37% of all of the ordinary shares in Lemur
Bushveld now intends to proceed with the compulsory acquisition of all of the remaining shares in Lemur that it does not already own.