Quick fire – industry news briefs

GBM Resources is commencing diamond drilling at the Mount Margaret project, immediately north of the Ernest Henry copper-gold mine in North-West Queensland. It is part of the company's Cloncurry project farm-in/joint venture with Nippon Mining of Australia, which holds a 55 per cent interest and is funding the exploration. Moving Loop Electro-Magnetic (MLEM) surveying in 2022 defined a strong and deep basement conductor at the FC4 prospect, 7km north of Ernest Henry. GBM said the single deep diamond drill hole planned would test the MLEM plate models for the presence of Eloise-style massive pyrrhotite-pyrite-chalcopyrite mineralisation in a favourable reduced host rock contact shear zone setting. The latest assays from a core drilling program at the Briggs copper project in Central Queensland confirm copper-molybdenum sulphide mineralisation in multiple holes over a significant strike-length. Highlights include a 24m intersection grading at 0.39 per cent copper and 126ppm molybdenum. Canterbury Resources said its joint venture partner Alma Metals was funding the drill program and had the right to earn up to 70 per cent interest in the project via staged expenditure totaling $15.25 million. The Teck Resources board of directors has unanimously rejected a revised acquisition proposal from Glencore. Glencore proposes spinning out standalone coal and metals businesses - MetalsCo and CoalCo - from the groups’ combined assets as part of its takeover deal. Glencore has proposed to introduce a cash sweetener to the merger-demerger deal to effectively buy Teck shareholders out of their coal exposure. Teck shareholders would receive 24 per cent of MetalsCo and $US8.2 billion in cash. Galilee Energy has started scoping studies and front-end engineering work for a potential hydrogen demonstration using the water produced at its Glenaras gas project. The company announced that it had received its 2021/22 financial year R&D tax rebate of $7.7 million, saying this was backing that work and accelerating activities at the pilot to enhance de-watering. Sunshine Gold has returned further high-grade gold, silver and critical minerals results from at the Wilbur’s Hill and Cardigan Dam targets at its Ravenswood West project. Sampling of a shear zone immediately adjacent to the Wilbur’s Hill breccia gold target returned results including 7.30 g/t gold, 691 g/t silver, 1.42 per cent lead, 0.21 per cent bismuth and 10.1ppm indium. Cardigan Dam (Lighthouse farm-in) sampling highlights included 13.20 g/t gold, 4.8 g/t silver; and a rock chip returning 0.62 per cent cobalt, 0.48 per cent copper, 0.92 per cent barium, 185ppm nickel. Atlas Copco has agreed to acquire dewatering, environmental services and water treatment business National Pump & Energy (NPE). “NPE has strong market recognition, and great expertise," Atlas Copco business area president power technique Andrew Walker said. “The acquisition will strengthen our presence in dewatering and water treatment, which is an area where needs are increasing due to climate change and more frequent flooding events. This is driving the need for fast response and specialty dewatering solutions.” The purchase price is not disclosed. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close during the second quarter of 2023. MaxMine has secured a three-year, multi-million-dollar technology renewal agreement with Callide coal mine operator Batchfire Resources. Batchfire is committing to a reduction of 5 per cent per year in Scope 1 (mostly diesel related) emissions as part of its updated ESG strategy. Alongside the existing suite of products utilised at the Callide mine, Batchfire is the foundation customer of MaxMine Carbon, a system for CO2 emissions management and reporting. Batchfire chief executive officer Allan Fidock said: “We first began using MaxMine’s suite of technology products in 2019, initially trialling the system on three trucks, before later implementing it across our entire pre-strip fleet which, at the time, consisted of six excavators and 45 trucks. “The system has improved our truck and excavator fleet operations, and has recently been extended to also cover our ancillary fleet of graders, water carts, dozers and front-end loaders – all up, a total of 83 machine units growing to 95.” A combination of hardware and software offers operational analytics, business improvement (BI), short interval control, production optimisation, safety and incident investigations, production reporting, and carbon reporting.

Quick fire – industry news briefs

Industry Queensland

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