Turbotech

Curtin chancellor Colin Beckett and vice-chancellor Professor Deborah Terry, Deputy Premier Liza Harvey and Member for Kalgoorlie Wendy Duncan at Agricola’s relaunch . By Elizabeth Fabri CURTIN University WA School of Mines’ accommodation in Kalgoorlie has undergone a $32 million facelift to encourage more students into the region. A collaboration between Curtin University and the WA Government, the Agricola facility will provide accommodation for 228 students, with 180 new individual bedrooms and 48 refurbished rooms. Curtin Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Terry said the rebuild and refurbishment was extremely important to Kalgoorlie as it would help attract high-calibre students to the region. “The existing accommodation – which had been in operation since the 1970s – needed to be significantly upgraded to meet...

IMPROVED market conditions and boosted production have helped Alcoa to record a US$94 million net profit for the March 2012 quarter, after reporting a loss the previous quarter. At the end of December 2011, Alcoa posted a $191 million loss for that three month period. In its March 2012 report, Alcoa said the company had negotiated its way back to positive cashflow via productivity improvements across all of its businesses, higher realised prices for aluminium and improved volume and mix. “Performance rebounded strongly this quarter due to our proactive cash sustainability actions, our relentless focus on profitable growth and stabilising markets,” Alcoa chairman and chief executive officer Klaus Kleinfeld said. “Challenges remain in this economy, but we approach them better...

Queensland Resources Minister Scott Stewart announced today the state’s fifth consecutive round of funding to support exploration. The funding, administered through the Collaboration Exploration Initiative (CEI), aims to support Queensland’s resource exploration companies by providing grants to encourage exploration, particularly in frontier and greenfield areas. Queensland Exploration Council chair Kim Wainwright says she expects competition to be strong, based on the response to previous rounds, and welcomes the latest round of $2.5m in funding for this CEI round. “The CEI has provided $10 million worth of funding to more than 190 explorers over the past 14 years,” she said. Ms Wainwright said Queensland’s CEI led to more than 50 significant mineral deposit discoveries in that time in under-explored areas of...

A seven-hole drill program completed by Australian explorer White Rock Minerals in April has produced substantial gold mineralisation results. Drilling has reinforced evidence of gold within the company’s emerging Red Rock prospect, at the Mt Carrington gold-silver project in north eastern NSW. The program was designed to infill drilling gaps within known mineralisation zones, to firm up existing data on the geological model. To date, 17 of the 23 holes drilled have been assessed to hold promising gold quantities at easily accessible depths. The newest test drills were also exploratory in nature, testing for gold vein continuance, particularly within the northerly mineralisation belt, Deadman’s Zone. This zone remains open to the north. The assays conducted from the newest diamond drilling...