Latest news with #DynamicMetals
West Australian
04-08-2025
- Business
- West Australian
Dynamic and MinRes tweak WA lithium joint venture deal
ASX-listed Dynamic Metals has sealed a revamped lithium joint venture with mining heavyweight Mineral Resources at their Western Australian Widgiemooltha project in the Southern Goldfields by tweaking the key terms to extend their partnership and streamline their tenements. The updated formal agreement expands on the original binding term sheet inked in March last year and provides for a sharpened focus on the duo's lithium hotspots. Under the original deal, MinRes can earn up to 80 per cent of the lithium rights attached to Dynamic's fully owned leases over two stages for a total spend of $20 million. The latest changes mean MinRes has an extra two years added to the stage two earn-in period - stretching it to six years in total - and gives the miner more runway to spend its way to a deeper stake in the prized lithium ground. Dynamic has also received the final $1 million of a $3.6 million cash injection from MinRes for stage one, locking in the latter's initial 40 per cent interest in the lithium mineral rights across the joint venture ground. The revised earn-in commitment for stage two has also been dialled back from $15 million to $14 million. Dynamic still sees this as a sizeable investment, underpinning MinRes' ongoing belief in the potential of the Widgiemooltha region to deliver another significant lithium discovery. Notably, the updated structure isn't just a paper reshuffle - it sharpens the lithium focus. Sixteen tenements have been carved out of the joint venture and returned to full Dynamic control, allowing the partners to zoom in on land parcels showing the most promise. The new deal frees up Dynamic to keep its eyes on the gold prize in the remainder of its expansive Widgiemooltha holdings, where it retains full ownership. That ground sits among some of WA's most fertile exploration real estate, just south of Kambalda and adjacent to several million-ounce gold systems. The company has no less than 12 major gold prospects and at least 10 further targets showing decent sniffs of the yellow metal in the region. Management says the number of prospects is likely to grow as more exploration is conducted. Dynamic recently announced it had received heritage clearance to move ahead with drilling on one of its hottest prospects, Chalice South, about 7 kilometres south of Westgold Resources' Chalice gold mine. The licence takes in 14km of the same gold-rich greenstone corridor that's already churned out more than half a million ounces of gold. The historic Chalice mine, originally worked by Resolute Limited in the 1990s, yielded 2.9 million tonnes at a juicy 5.6 grams per tonne (g/t) for 517,000 ounces. Avoca Resources later took a bite with a boutique underground play before the site was mothballed in 2015. Most recently, Dynamic's rig has also been probing its Anomaly A and Anomaly B targets at the company's Cognac West prospect, 40km to the northeast of Chalice. The 19-hole phase two drilling program was designed to chase up on a stage one, 32-hole reverse circulation program in March, which hauled in some tantalising results. These included 32 metres grading 0.25g/t gold from 68m, 8m going at 0.36g/t gold and 16m at 0.29g/t gold from 84m. In one particular hole, drilling peeled back even more layers, returning four separate gold-bearing zones ranging from 32m going at 0.25g/t from 32m, 12m grading 0.28g/t from 76m, 12m at 0.32g/t from 92m and 12m running at 0.28g/t from 112m. While the grades aren't breaking records just yet, the widths are raising eyebrows. In particular, Dynamic is keeping a close eye on some notable copper hits suggesting a much larger mineralised system may be lurking beneath the surface. With the lithium joint venture now locked in and restructured to reflect operational realities, MinRes and Dynamic appear ready to drill deeper into what could become WA's next big critical minerals success story. And with the first-year technical reviews already complete and the highest priority ground now isolated, the stage is set for targeted, high-impact lithium exploration in the months ahead. Both parties will be hoping the next round of drill bits strikes the kind of spodumene-rich pegmatites that have put WA at the epicentre of the global battery metals boom. Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:
West Australian
23-07-2025
- Business
- West Australian
Dynamic eyes new polymetallic structure in WA Goldfields
Dynamic Metals has picked up promising signs of what could be a robust copper and gold system rich in sulphides from a phase two drilling program of the Anomaly A and Anomaly B targets at its Cognac West prospect. Cognac West makes up part of the company's broader Widgiemooltha project in WA's southeast Goldfields and management says the drill bit might be scratching the surface of a much larger mineralised beast. The 19-hole phase two drilling campaign was designed to chase up on March's 32-hole reverse circulation program, which produced some highly encouraging results, particularly at Anomaly B. These included 32 metres grading 0.25 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 68m, 8m going at 0.36g/t gold and 16m at 0.29g/t gold from 84m. At another hole, four distinct zones of mineralisation were intercepted ranging from 32m going at 0.25g/t from 32m, 12m grading 0.28 g/t from 76m, 12m at 0.32g/t from 92m and 12m running at 0.28g/t from 112m. The company says that multiple broad zones of lower-grade gold mineralisation hint at a larger system that may be in play. About 600m north of the broad low-grade zones at Anomaly B, Dynamic drilled a scissor hole to chase down an earlier standout hit of 4m at a sizzling 5.04g/t gold within 8m at 2.78g/t from 60m in fresh rock. The follow-up didn't disappoint, delivering a solid 4m going 1.66g/t from 56m. While chasing gold at Anomaly B, Dynamic also hit paydirt with further copper hits. Several holes picked up anomalous copper zones, including 6m running at 0.22 per cent copper from 114m and 12m grading 0.15 per cent copper from 104m. This built on previous hits such as 5m grading 0.44 per cent copper, including a tasty 1m section going 1.06 per cent copper. Although the copper and gold appear to be unrelated, the results still got tongues wagging, particularly given copper shows up in both the supergene and fresh rock zones. Chalcopyrite and cobaltite, which are key sulphide minerals, were picked up in one hole at 62m depth. Coupled with an intriguing structural and lithological complexity, the tea leaves point to sulphide-rich mineralisation and the potential for a broader polymetallic system or even a multiphase hydrothermal system. Micro-XRF mapping has helped identify mineral zoning, suggesting multiple stacked mineralisation events. A late-time conductive feature, seen in airborne electromagnetic surveys, is being reprocessed to better understand what might be fuelling the mineralisation below. At Anomaly A - one kilometre east of Anomaly B - drill testing has been completed beneath a surface gold-bearing quartz vein, which threw up some spectacular rock chips, including 2040g/t, 53.1g/t and 8.95g/t gold. Anomaly A's drill results were a mixed bag and did not replicate the rock chip highs but still pulled up 4m running at 0.15g/t gold from 28m and 4m at 0.12g/t gold from 40m, offering a thread for the company to follow up. Dynamic has an aggressive exploration program in motion. Reverse circulation drilling is already scheduled for its nearby Chalice South prospect and first-pass assays are pending from the Courvoisier gold target, 4.5km away. Dynamic is sitting pretty on $3 million in the bank at the end of June and has since received a further $1 million from Mineral Resources as a deferred transaction payment, leaving it well funded to further explore its grounds. If the next round of drilling confirms what this round is hinting at - a significant, polymetallic mineralised system - then the $13 million market cap junior explorer could quickly move from potential to discovery. Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:
West Australian
25-06-2025
- Business
- West Australian
Dynamic wraps up soil tests on WA Widgiemooltha gold target
Dynamic Metals has wrapped up a first-pass soil sampling campaign at the company's Courvoisier gold prospect, part of its flagship Widgiemooltha project in Western Australia's southern Goldfields. The prospect sits 4.4 kilometres northeast of the company's promising Cognac West prospect and lies directly along the regionally significant Republican Thrust fault - a major structural corridor often viewed as a magnet for mineralisation. The key structure is thought to control multiple orientations of shear zones and quartz veining at Courvoisier. Both are classic hallmarks of gold-bearing systems. Dynamic collected 385 soil samples across a 2km by 1.5km zone at the site, using a systematic 50-metre by 200m grid spacing. The company has dispatched bagged samples for multi-element and gold assays and expects to receive the results in late July. Courvoisier has seen little exploration since the 1990s, with most historical work limited to shallow drilling and gold-only assays. The only standout result from the old timers was a modest 5m section grading 0.65 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 41m. Given the target's underexplored status, Dynamic has moved it to the top of the priority list, breathing new life into the area with a modern data-rich exploration push built around detailed geochemical sampling. Dynamic says the campaign at Courvoisier forms part of a broader, methodical approach to exploration across the company's sprawling 800-square-kilometre Widgiemooltha landholding. Its grounds stretch between the historic mining hubs of Norseman and Kambalda - an area synonymous with gold since 1892. And Courvoisier isn't the only area commanding the company's attention. Dynamic has also kicked off permitting for a 13-hole reverse circulation drilling program at its Chalice South prospect, on the western side of the wider project area. Drill rigs will target five areas identified from historical results and are expected to fire up in the September quarter. Meanwhile, anticipation is mounting as Dynamic awaits assay results from its second-phase drilling at the Cognac West prospect. The recent campaign zeroed in on quartz veins and broader mineralised zones identified earlier in the year. The company's 19-hole reverse circulation drilling campaign targeted two standout anomalies, dubbed A and B, following up on a string of promising high-grade hits from the first round of drilling. Those initial results included a headline 8m grading 2.87g/t gold, featuring a richer 4m stretch of 5.37g/t gold from 60m depth. Other highlights from the March drilling blitz included a broad 44m hit going 0.33g/t, with a higher-grade sweet spot of 4m at 1.21g/t from 36m, and a 24m intercept grading 0.33g/t from 48m. All mineralisation was encountered in fresh rock, suggesting a robust gold system may be developing below surface. Structurally complex, Cognac West is shaped by a network of smaller faults and fractures radiating from a late-stage felsic intrusion. The prospect sits just 500m east of the Republican Thrust fault. Despite a patchy trail of historical data, the area did deliver one eye-catching legacy result of a single metre running at a staggering 91.3g/t gold from 41m depth. Dynamic rekindled interest in the prospect in 2024 with a detailed remapping campaign that combined soil sampling, rock chipping and on-ground geological work. The program unearthed two soil anomalies above 25 parts per billion gold and rock chip assays turned up some real showstoppers, including 2040g/t, 53.1g/t and 8.95g/t gold, hinting at a potentially high-grade system lurking beneath the surface. The assays from phase two at Cognac West are expected back by mid-July and will feed directly into geological modelling to shape a phase three drilling campaign. With a modest market cap of just $12.67 million and $4.11 million in the bank in March, Dynamic Metals looks to be punching well above its weight as it goes full throttle at Widgiemooltha and puts the priority Courvoisier prospect in the spotlight. With rigs on standby, assays around the corner and multiple gold targets firing on all cylinders, the company's 2025 campaign is shaping up as one of its most action-packed seasons yet. In a region steeped in prospecting history, Dynamic seems to be digging deep to write the next golden chapter. Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:
Times
22-06-2025
- Business
- Times
What the NatWest chief hopes to learn from his customers
Surrounded by about £10 million worth of high-grade metal stored in a warehouse on the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard, Paul Thwaite, the chief executive of NatWest, is a world away from London's Square Mile financial district. The boss of the FTSE 100 lender is visiting Dynamic Metals, a family-owned company in Bedfordshsire that supplies customers in defence, aerospace and Formula One and is one of the 1.5 million firms served by Britain's biggest business bank. Over the whine of industrial bandsaws, Alex Bailey, Dynamic's operations director, gives Thwaite, 53, a tour of the site, which has been extended using financing supplied by NatWest and is partly powered by roof-mounted solar panels funded by the bank's asset finance business. Trips like these are more than just a chance for Thwaite to see the lender's finance in action, however. They also give him a glimpse of business sentiment on the ground. Two hours earlier he attended a roundtable at the bank's Milton Keynes branch with 14 of its business customers, ranging from a professional services software company and IT security firm to a pipe coupling manufacturer and baby clothes maker. The overwhelming message from them was that despite all the talk from the government about prioritising economic growth, very little seemed to have changed in practice, and that red tape was stifling. 'I'm going to have to have a compliance department,' Seth Woodmansterne, the managing director of a greetings card supplier, told Thwaite, to laughter from the others. 'We're talking about greeting cards!' For Thwaite, who tries to meet customers at least every week, events like these are 'very valuable' and are a 'much better way of getting insight' than the reams of reports from consultancies that he reads. 'Hearing it direct is better than through others,' he told The Times in an interview afterwards. It's typical of the down-to-earth Liverpudlian, who previously ran the NatWest division that looks after its business customers and was suddenly thrust into the top job two years ago after Dame Alison Rose was pushed out by the previous government over the Nigel Farage account closure scandal. Ministers were able to intervene because the state at the time still owned 39 per cent of NatWest, a stake that was a legacy of the bank's £45.5 billion taxpayer bailout during the 2008 financial crisis. • Pay boost for NatWest chief from shareholders In a watershed moment for the lender, however, the government finally sold its remaining shares in NatWest last month, returning it to full private ownership after years of painful restructuring. The state's exit, which cemented a £10.5 billion loss for taxpayers, is 'a new chapter' for the group and its employees, thousands of whom, like Thwaite, were working at the lender during the bailout. Now that NatWest is out of the government's grasp, there is speculation in the City about what Thwaite does next. He has already put growth firmly on the agenda, having last year acquired both a £2.5 billion portfolio of residential mortgages from Metro Bank and most of Sainsbury's banking operations. This has spurred speculation in the City that further deals may be in the offing. It emerged this year that NatWest had made an unsuccessful approach for Santander's UK business. Last week Benjamin Toms, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, a stockbroker, also tipped NatWest as the most logical suitor for TSB. Sabadell, the Spanish owner of TSB, has confirmed that it had 'received preliminary non-binding expressions of interest' in its British high street business, one of which is believed to have come from Santander. Toms reckoned TSB could be worth £2.6 billion, which NatWest could pay without needing to raise capital, and that buying it would boost NatWest's market share in UK mortgages 'where the bank is underpenetrated' by about two percentage points. Yet Thwaite, who would not comment specifically on TSB, signalled that NatWest was not interested in a bid, insisting there was a 'very high bar' for any dealmaking 'financially and operationally and culturally' and that management were confident in their ability to grow the business organically. 'My responsibility to the company and the shareholders is to do things that make compelling sense for shareholders,' he said. 'Adding a couple of percentage points to market share is not an existential issue.' Thwaite has spent his entire career in banking. After studying management science and chemistry at the University of Manchester, he joined the Santander graduate scheme before quickly switching to NatWest in 1997. He has stayed ever since, rising through the ranks in a variety of roles before taking charge during the reputational crisis caused by the Farage debacle in July 2023. The chaotic departure of Rose was announced in the middle of the night and Thwaite received a call late in the evening from Sir Howard Davies, NatWest's then chairman, asking him to step up and become chief executive. 'It's a crucible moment because you suddenly find yourself in a position which you maybe hadn't anticipated two days before.' Even so, Thwaite said he 'wasn't fazed by it' and 'jumped straight in'. Since then, as well as having struck the Sainsbury's and Metro deals, he is at the forefront of industry lobbying efforts aimed at encouraging the government to scrap the ring-fencing regime, a central plank of Britain's reforms to make banks safer following the 2008 crisis by forcing them to legally separate their retail divisions from riskier operations. • Banks' ring-fencing rules under scrutiny by City watchdog The industry claims the rules are inefficient and have been supplanted by other regulatory changes, although critics would argue that axing the regime will make banks less safe. Thwaite insisted that 'NatWest will not forget the lessons of the financial crisis' and that he is simply posing the question, 'is it the right time to review' the rules? The government is likely to be receptive to the idea. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has put deregulation across industries at the centre of her drive to boost growth and is under pressure to show progress, with the latest official figures showing the UK economy contracted by a bigger-than-expected 0.3 per cent in April. The small businesses at the roundtable hosted by NatWest in Milton Keynes certainly felt they were getting little help from either central or local government, with Woodmansterne, the greetings cards boss, telling Thwaite 'I have no engagement whatsoever, despite trying, from MPs or council'. The NatWest boss said that 'there is no doubt from what I see in my interactions [with government] that they are determined to find a way to grow' and that 'you could argue it's still relatively early days'. 'What you've heard from the businesses today is they want, people want, to see the tangible benefits. I think we're approaching the moment of truth.' The boss of NatWest has retreated from the 'purpose-led' strategy of his predecessor that came under attack during the scandal over its decision to close the Coutts account of Nigel Farage. NatWest, which owns the Coutts private bank, became embroiled in the culture wars two years ago when Farage, who leads Reform UK, obtained Coutts internal documents about its decision. These showed that its reputational risk committee believed his public views 'were at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation'. This stoked a row over freedom of speech and the affair ultimately cost Dame Alison Rose her job as NatWest chief executive, with Paul Thwaite promoted to replace her. It also led to close scrutiny of Rose's interest in diversity and inclusivity in business, which she had championed. Since then, there has been a shift in stance at the group. In the last annual report published under Rose there were 262 instances of the word 'purpose'. This compares with 125 in the most recent report under Thwaite, where there was no mention at all of the lender being 'purpose-led'. In an interview with The Times, Thwaite, who said he abhors corporate jargon, asked: 'Could you name the purpose?' He said the strategy now was 'about what we're doing with our customers, not what the bank's doing about particular issues' such as the energy transition and social mobility. 'I think a lot of the communication about the bank, both external and internal, talked to those topics, and it could have drawn the link more clearly between how those topics are in service of our customers.' However, he insisted that NatWest had not pulled back from environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies, even though there has been a broader shift away from these areas in the wider corporate world recently. 'We're still one of the biggest banks for sustainable finance. We have brilliant ESG teams, we're following our customers.'
West Australian
28-05-2025
- Business
- West Australian
Dynamic fires up rigs to chase encouraging Widgiemooltha gold hits
Dynamic Metals has revved up the rigs again at its Cognac West gold prospect in WA's fertile Widgiemooltha region, chasing more golden glory after a slew of promising intercepts earlier this year. Phase two of the company's reverse circulation (RC) campaign is now underway. The company's 19-hole program will focus on two main anomalies, dubbed A and B, to extend a cluster of juicy hits from the first round of drilling, including an 8m hit at 2.87 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, featuring a richer 4m stretch at 5.37g/t from 60m. Other notable results from the March program include 44m at 0.33g/t gold, with a higher-grade pocket of 4m at 1.21g/t from 36m, and a broader 24m hit going 0.33g/t from 48m. All these intercepts sit within fresh rock. Cognac West has a complicated geological structure, with smaller faults and cracks formed around a late felsic intrusion. It sits 500m east of the Republican Thrust fault, a structurally rich zone that's only seen sporadic attention since near surface work was conducted in the 1970s. Although much of the legacy data from that period is patchy, one historic drill hole reported 1m at an eye-popping 91.3g/t gold from 41m. When Dynamic re-mapped the area in 2024 with fresh soils, rock chips and boots-on-ground work, the program flagged two soil anomalies above 25 parts per billion gold. Meanwhile, rock chip samples lit up with whopping results of 2040g/t, 53.1g/t and 8.95g/t gold. The new drilling campaign combines historic data with the company's recent results. It is designed to zero in on extensions of known mineralisation and chase structural repetitions across Dynamic's target zones. At anomaly A, where a surface-mapped quartz vein returned the historic 2040g/t rock chip, initial drilling under the vein was underwhelming. However, the new phase two drill program will plunge deeper, chasing fresh rock potential and probing west, where a 220m gold trend is emerging. Over at anomaly B, the first drill pass unearthed a 100m-wide east-west corridor of gold anomalism in fresh rock, anchored by the hits of 24m grading 0.33g/t and 44m at 0.33g/t gold. Dynamic says this zone lines up nicely with gold-in-soil highs and a subtle magnetic feature, hinting at a larger, structurally controlled system. Dynamic says it intends to test anomaly B with different drill orientations to unravel the controls and chase down a higher-grade zone that coughed up the 8m at 2.87g/t gold hit from 60m in its phase one drilling program. That intercept lies 600m northwest of a broader low grade gold zone and will be followed up along strike and down dip. Drilling is expected to wrap up within two weeks, with assays expected early July, setting the stage for potential fireworks in the company's next quarterly. With a tight capital structure, $4.1 million in the bank and a market capitalisation just north of $13M, Dynamic looks poised to punch well above its weight if Cognac West continues to deliver. Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact:
