Critical minerals conference 2025

Granny Smith’s day in the sun: Gold Fields expands solar farm Gold Fields will be more than doubling the capacity of the solar farm at its Granny Smith mine in Laverton WA, with completion scheduled early next year. The gold mine’s hybrid system, comprising 8MW on-site solar, a 2MW battery power system and gas plant, generated 7% of its electricity supply from renewables in CY23. Now, in a continuous bid to reduce the mine site’s energy costs and carbon intensity, Gold Fields will expand solar capacity at Granny Smith to a total of 19MW, an...

South32 (ASX: S32) has reported solid operating and financial performance for Q3 FY26, maintaining production guidance across all operations except Australia Manganese.

Analysis confirms suitable flake size for lithium-ion batteries Initial petrographic analysis has indicated graphite from Kingsland Minerals’ (ASX:KNG) Leliyn graphite project is attractive and potentially suitable for use in lithium-ion batteries. The graphite flakes underwent a micronising process before being further processed into spherical graphite. Flake sizes of less than 150 microns are preferred as larger flakes require greater size reduction which incurs a higher cost. At this stage, Leliyn looks to have flake sizes that are well favourable for battery anode material. Samples were collected at seven to eight-metre intervals down the core holes for petrographic analysis. This involves making a thin section of the core, allowing light to pass through the rock....

ENCOURAGING preliminary results for nickel and copper indicators have been returned from exploration on a “small portion” of Thor Mining’s tenement holding at the Dundas gold project in southern WA, according to a recent announcement from the company. Thor reported that analysis of surface geochemical cross sections of calcrete samples from a 25 square kilometre area of exploration tenement had been completed, as part of exploration being conducted in conjunction with the ongoing gold exploration program at Dundas. According to the company, three areas of elevated nickel and one of copper, plus one site of coincident copper and nickel, were revealed in the analysis. “This is an encouraging start in assessing the nickel prospectivity of the Dundas project,” Thor executive...