Thursday’s HotCopper trends: Wide Open Agriculture, VHM, Great Western Exploration and other daily topics

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Pioneering food ingredient company Wide Open Agriculture (ASX:WOA) was popular with HotCopper watchers after it announced progress in a series of strategic initiatives designed to strengthen the company’s commercial position and improve the economics of its lupin ingredient platform.

Following a comprehensive review of its cost structure, supply chain and manufacturing strategy, the company is implementing a series of initiatives to ensure its economics are built for capital efficient expansion.

Notable moves included a defined four-stage scale-up pathway toward large scale industrial production and the decision to immediately wind down a German facility, materially reducing overheads.

“WOA has reached an exciting point in its development, with strong foundations now in place, including proprietary technology, regulatory approvals in key markets, and a global distribution network,” chair, Justin Brown, said.

WOA was up 42.9% to 1.0c at the time of going to press.

VHM (ASX:VHM) took off on news it had entered into a long term strategic partnership with Iluka Resources (ASX:ILU) comprising a binding offtake agreement.

The collaboration also features a $40 million convertible note funding package for the fully-permitted Goschen rare earths and mineral sands project in Victoria.

VHM CEO, Andrew King, said the strategic partnership provides VHM with a value accretive and low capital intensity development pathway for Goschen.

VHM will provide secure rare earths concentrate (REC) to Iluka’s Eneabba rare earths refinery which will be Australia’s first operating rare earths oxide refinery.

“This partnership is a transformational milestone for VHM and materially advances the development of the Goschen project. The combination of long-term demand certainty, downstream access and financing support significantly derisks the project and reinforces the role Goschen and Eneabba can play in building sovereign, value-add rare earths processing capability and supply chain in Australia.”

VHM was up 43.5% to 33.0c at the time of writing.

Great Western Exploration (ASX:GTE) is being closely followed with drilling now underway at its Juggernaut VHMS camp in WA.

Drilling will examine six potential targets with key similarities to Sandfire’s DeGrussa, with strong geochemical anomalies and favourable structural settings.

MD, Shane Pike, told shareholders the six individual targets at Archer, Falconer, Seymour, Smith, Howard and Palmer show highly favourable stratigraphic, structural, and geochemical attributes.

He added that the high prospectivity of the targets is supported by the confluence of multiple geological attributes and based on these factors, Great Western believes there is high potential for a VHMS discovery to be made, similar to the DeGrussa copper-gold deposit in the adjacent Bryah Basin.

GTE jumped 20.0% to 1.2¢ on the positive news.

Looking wider, the S&P/ASX 200 was down 7.20 points this morning to 8,715.70. The bottom performing stocks in this index were Monadelphous and Megaport, down 10.78% and 8.40% respectively.

The index has lost 0.38% for the last five days but is virtually unchanged year to date.

On the commodity front, oil was down after reports of an oversupply in the market amid easing tensions in the Middle East. Negotiators for the US and Iran have arrived for peace talks in Doha, with US representatives saying progress in indirect talks with Iran had been made.

Elsewhere, gold jumped after reports the US was looking to raise interest rates, had eased.

Meanwhile, the latest ABS figures for exports and imports statistics on a balance of payments and international merchandise trade basis – saw a decline in exports.

The seasonally adjusted balance on goods decreased $4,401 million in May, with exports decreasing 6.9% to $3,224 million driven by non-monetary gold and metal ores and minerals.

Imports increased 2.6% to $1,177 million, pushed by non-industrial transport equipment and civil aircraft and confidentialised items.

This is the second seasonally adjusted trade in goods deficit in 2026 and the first deficit on an original basis since January 2018.

That’s Thursday’s HotCopper Market Trends, I’m Colin Sandell-Hay ⁠- see you for close.

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