Master Drilling has commissioned its first remote drilling system in Canada at Agnico Eagle’s Odyssey Mine in Quebec, starting with reaming a 220-m hole using a 5.5-m diameter reamer. The RD7 raiseboring machine is operated remotely, removing personnel from the immediate drilling area while maintaining tight control of alignment and breakthrough. For geotechnical and mine planning teams, the successful large-diameter, long-hole trial signals growing viability of remote raiseboring for ventilation shafts and service raises in deep Canadian operations.

Volta Metals’ Springer rare earths project, 70 km east of Sudbury with road access and grid power on site, now hosts 56.6 million indicated tonnes at 0.7% TREO plus 119.5 million inferred tonnes at 0.58% TREO, including a near-surface high-grade core of 11.5 million tonnes at 1.1% TREO. A 1,638-metre drill campaign delivered an 11-fold resource increase over the historical estimate, with more than 5,000 metres planned to support a preliminary economic assessment by end-2026. Fall drilling also intersected 131.9 metres at 81.2 g/t Ga2O3 and 1.4% TREO from 59.6 metres, positioning Springer as a potential primary gallium resource pending recovery testwork.

Hemlo Mining has reported a standout intercept of 16.1 g/t gold over 8.1 m from 99 m depth in South‑Rim hole 7652606 at its Ontario mine, including a 2 m interval at 59.7 g/t, as part of a 130,000 m 2026 drilling campaign. South‑Rim sits 50–150 m from the producing C‑Zone and is interpreted as part of a plunge‑controlled structure extending >1.5 km vertically within a 300 m‑wide east‑west corridor, with five underground and one surface rig currently active. All seven completed South‑Rim holes hit mineralisation, which remains open along strike and down plunge, while step‑out work is shifting east towards the largely untested B‑Zone.