Exploration momentum is building across Australia as Auravelle Metals, Terrain Minerals and Amara Minerals push gold and antimony projects forward via reverse circulation (RC) drilling, technical studies and early-stage resource work. Terrain is advancing its Lightning gold project towards a maiden resource while also running new RC drilling campaigns at Nuckulla Hill to test extensions to known mineralisation. Amara is reporting growing confidence in a deepening antimony system at Lauriston, signalling potential for larger-scale, higher-grade underground targets.

Metso has secured orders worth over €10 million to supply two Premier horizontal grinding mills to Emerald Resources’ Dingo Range Gold Project in Western Australia and Memot Gold Project in Cambodia, booked in Metso’s Minerals segment Q2 2026. The package includes a 12 ft x 18 ft, 1.6 MW Premier ball mill for Dingo Range and a 15 ft x 22 ft, 3 MW Premier SAG mill for Memot, both with Metso’s gear-driven technology. The mills are designed for gold ore grinding circuits, with Metso providing engineering support and spare parts to optimise throughput and availability.

Copper’s record run to $6.667/lb ($14,700/t) now gives 75 operating copper mines nominal annual copper revenues above $1 billion based on 2025 mine-level production, up from 52 on the previous MINING.COM “unicorn” list. The analysis excludes byproduct credits, meaning several large Cu-Au or Cu-Mo operations would exceed $1 billion at effectively negative net copper cost once gold, molybdenum or cobalt are accounted for. With copper making up nearly 6% of initial capex for hyperscale data centres, the sector is positioned to capture a larger share of AI-driven infrastructure spending.