Quarterly Wrap: Copper miner Austral extends life at Anthill, Antilles prepares to build a mine in Cuba

It’s a wrap for Q3 and here are some of the highlights from a few ASX juniors on their activities for the three months to the end of September.

Austral Resources (ASX:AR1)

During the quarter AR1 continued to focus on extending copper mine life at its Mt Isa copper cathode operations in QLD as the flagship Anthill campaign is set to conclude in March 2025.

It’s looking to ensure the continuity of oxide mining and plans to initiate a maiden sulphide mining campaign within the existing Mt Clarke and Flying Horse open pits.

At Mt Kelly, the Q3 copper a total of 3,152t of copper metal was delivered to the heap leach pads, surpassing the budgeted 3,069t.

Cumulatively, the project has now seen 2,193,543dmt of ore stacked, resulting in a total of 19,402.75 tonnes of copper metal stacked to date.

AR1 has an operational cashflow of $5.1m by Q3 end and has a market cap of $57m and share price of 16c.

Conico (ASX:CNJ)

A scoping study is in progress at CNJ’s Mt Thirsty critical minerals 50:50 JV with Greenstone Resources (ASX:GSR) which is due in November.

Mt Thirsty is 16 km NW of Norseman and plays host to a cobalt, nickel, manganese scandium deposit with a resource of 66.2MT @ 0.006% Co, 0.43% Ni and 0.45% Mn and drilled into identified Sc up to 78m @ 46.4g/t from 3m earlier in the year.

The study includes an updated mineral resource estimate, mine design, tailings management
plan and associated site infrastructure design.

CNJ has a market cap of $7.85m and shares are trading at 0.5c.

Antilles Gold (ASX:AAU)

AAu is planning to build two near-term gold mining operations in JV with the Cuban Government’s mining sidearm GeoMinera, La Demajagua and Nueva Sabana, to fund its copper porphyry hunt.

A 7,000m diamond drilling program continued into gold and copper domains of the El Pilar oxide deposit at Nueva Sabana — which overlies a porphyry — with 24 holes for 3,282m drilled so far and is expected to be completed this month.

Cost estimates were completed and stand at US$25m based on an expected mining rate of 500,000-6000tpa and construction is planned for May/June next year.

At La Demajagua, planning of the open pit is ongoing and AAU anticipates a 9-year mine life at a mining rate of 815,000tpa, with the potential for underground operations to follow for a similar period.

A definitive feasibility study (DFS) at the project is ongoing and data has been collected for future exploration campaigns.

AAU has $3.85m cash on hand with a market cap of $17m and a share price of 2.2c.

South Harz Potash (ASX:SHP)

SHP progressed with a PFS for its Ohmgebirge potash project in Germany during the quarter which was 75% complete by the end of September.

Key milestones include the combining of engineering teams, studies on development configurations and base case layout and construction models.

The mine plan was completed and bulk sample testing of ore confirmed grades of 13.5% potassium oxide (K2O) for the indicated 258Mt of the enormous 5 billion tonne inferred resource.

That resource is across three perpetual mining leases and two potash exploration licenses that covers a combined 659km2.

During Q3 the explorer raised $2.66m in a share placement in support of the project.

SHP had a cash balance of $2.3m at quarter end, a market cap of $21.4m and share price of 3c.

Austral Resources, Conico, Antilles Gold and South Harz Potash and are Stockhead advertisers.

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