Metal Tiger PLC (LON:MTR) expects to resume operations in Thailand following the recruitment of the final six members of the country’s new Mineral Committee.
Exploration effectively came to a halt in 2017 while a new Minerals Act was introduced.
The Mineral Committee has responsibility for a wide range of issues including bidding procedures, prospecting licences and health and environmental assessments.
Metal Tiger believes the recruitment of the Mineral Committee has cleared the last major legislative hurdle to the resumption of the permitting process in Thailand and its applications for licences at Kemco and Boh Yai can go forward.
Elsewhere this week, Metal Tiger revealed it has doubled its exploration acreage in the Kalahari Copper Belt in Botswana.
An earn-in agreement has been signed with Resource Exploration and Development (RED) over five recently granted exploration licences covering 4,661sq km.
Metal Tiger’s 50% owned joint venture Kalahari Metals (KML) will pay US$100,000 to acquire up to 25% of the licences, with an option to increase this to 75% through a further payment of US$700,000.
On Wednesday, Tharisa plc (LON:THS) released financial results for a year marked for its record production but also transition away from toll mining with a contractor to a company-owned fleet operation.
“FY2018 was a year of record production achieved with increased plant throughput and metal recovery,” the company said in a statement.
Tharisa produced 152,200 ounces of platinum group metals and 1.4mln tonnes of chrome concentrate in the twelve months ended 30 September 2018.
Strategic Minerals plc (LON:SML) hit what it says are bonanza grades from the latest drilling programme at Redmoor in Cornwall.
The indications for tungsten, tin and copper were the highest yet seen and had continued into the first hole of the phase 2 programme, added John Peters, Strategic’s managing director.
This last hole drilled showed bumper intercepts of up to 29.7% of tin equivalent, reflecting very high levels of tungsten.
SML wasn’t the only company reporting ‘bonanza grades’ this week, so too was Oriole Resources PLC (LON:ORR).
The AIM-listed firm said the results from a sampling of 454 rock chips from predominantly quartz and quartz-tourmaline veins had returned 16 samples containing over 10 grams per tonne (g/t) of Gold (Au), with 43 samples assayed containing over 1 g/t Au.
The best results included samples containing 135.4 g/t Au, 119.7 g/t Au, 117.2 g/t Au, and 107.2 g/t Au.
Anglesey Mining plc (LON:AYM) entered into an agreement with QME Mining Technical Services which will see QME carry out an agreed programme of design, engineering and optimisation studies relating to the future development of the Parys Mountain copper and zinc project in Anglesey.
There will be no cost to Anglesey.
Over the period to the end of June 2019, QME will carry out a detailed review of the various development and mining alternatives for Parys Mountain.
The primary objective is to determine the optimum production plan for Parys Mountain, utilising all available and potential means of accessing both the indicated resources and inferred resources, at various cut-off grades.
Asiamet Resources Limited (LON:ARS) raised US$3.3mln (£2.6mln) in a share placing on Wednesday to help fund a feasibility study at its Beruang Kanan Main (BKM) copper project in Indonesia.
The exploration firm said it had issued around 60.7mln new shares in the oversubscribed placing at a price of 4.25p each.
The proceeds would be used primarily to complete the feasibility study at BKM with an additional infill drilling program to upgrade inferred resources and provide increased data through geotechnical drilling for mine design parameters, with the final study to be delivered in the first half of 2019.
Sirius Minerals PLC (LON:SXX) confirmed the completion of its acquisition into the Cibra Group Companies, as part of the company’s supply agreements for South America.
The London-listed company is issuing 95mln new Sirius shares to Cibra and chief executive Chris Fraser will be appointed to the board of both Cibra Group Companies with immediate effect.
Earlier this month, Sirius Minerals told investors that the procurement is complete for the major construction packages in its Yorkshire mine development project.