New Frontier Minerals (LSE:NFM), in its procedural quarterly report, noted that its cash and liquid investments stood at A$1.22 million at the end of September.
It comprised A$0.94 million in cash plus roughly A$280,000 in ASX-listed shares, in its quarterly activities report covering the three months to that date.
The London and ASX-listed explorer, focused on copper in Queensland's Mt Isa Inlier alongside rare earth and heavy rare earth projects in Canada and the Northern Territory, added that it expects to receive an R&D Tax Incentive refund of approximately A$303,000 in November, which it said would further strengthen its cash position.
The quarter's main technical progress centred on the NWQ Copper Project, where assay results from a May field programme at the historical Mt Storm prospect, released on 13 July, confirmed high-grade copper at surface, with pit and dump samples returning up to 6.88% copper.
Sequential leach testing on the highest-grade sample returned 6.83% copper in the sulphuric acid-soluble fraction, indicating the mineralisation is dominantly hosted in oxide and secondary copper minerals potentially amenable to conventional acid-leach processing.
NFM's geological team returned to Mt Storm in late July to complete detailed mapping of the porphyritic syenite dyke and its contact zones, work intended to refine the structural model ahead of any future drill programme; Mt Storm lies approximately 8 km from the company's flagship Big One Deposit.
A systematic prospectivity review across the 977 km2 NWQ tenement package, released on 24 August, ranked more than 20 identified copper prospects and placed the Eldorado Prospect second behind Big One, with at least three interpreted zones of anomalous copper identified along a 5 km structural corridor associated with the Dorman Fault Zone, including rock-chip results up to 5,400 ppm copper.
The company recommended progressing reconnaissance work at Eldorado, including structural interpretation and potential ground geophysics, to refine drill-ready targets.
Big One itself holds a JORC 2012 inferred resource of 2.1 million tonnes at 1.1% copper for 21,886 tonnes of contained copper, and remains the subject of NFM's memorandum of understanding with Austral Resources, under which Austral would provide processing capacity at its Mt Kelly facility in exchange for ore feedstock from NFM's exploration package.
The company said the high acid-soluble copper component confirmed at Mt Storm during the quarter, combined with its proximity to both Big One and Mt Kelly, supports evaluating Mt Storm as a potential additional source of oxide copper feed under that alliance.
At the Harts Range Heavy Rare Earths and Niobium Project in the Northern Territory, independent modelling by Southern Geoscience Consultants, reported on 5 August, defined an untested bedrock conductor approximately 240 metres below surface within NFM's 100%-owned EL 34147, interpreted as prospective for copper-nickel mineralisation and generated from Geoscience Australia's publicly available AusAEM dataset at no data acquisition cost to the company.
Read more about New Frontier Minerals
- 24/08/26New Frontier ranks Eldorado second priority target at NWQ copper project
- 13/07/26New Frontier Minerals sees high-grade copper at Mt Storm
- 29/06/26New Frontier Minerals to target 40 untested prospects at Harts Range in July
The target sits roughly 3.5 km south of the Kings Cross magnetic anomaly and within 40 km of the C2 conductor identified through BHP Xplor-backed research published by Litchfield Minerals, though NFM noted that research relates to Litchfield's own tenure and is cited as regional context only.
Of the roughly 46 priority geophysical targets defined across Harts Range, only six have been drill-tested to date, through NFM's maiden reverse-circulation scout programme completed early in the year, leaving roughly 40 untested alongside the new conductor and the Kings Cross anomaly.
At the Pomme REE-Nb Project in Québec, where NFM holds an option to acquire up to 90% from Metallium, the company is running characterisation and metallurgical studies on existing drill core, combining conventional testwork with Metallium's proprietary Flash Joule Heating technology to target upgraded rare earth concentrates from zones including POM-23-03 and POM-23-01.
The board and management said their immediate focus remains the NWQ Copper Project as an advanced brownfields asset in the Mt Isa copper belt, followed by continued exploration at Harts Range and Pomme.