Small caps news round-up

Future hard drive technology received a boost on Thursday, with the announcement from Ilika that it was taking part in a two-year project, along with Seagate and the University of Southampton (UoS), that had been awarded a £374,000 grant by Innovate UK. The AIM-traded accelerated materials innovation company said Seagate was the market leader in magnetic recording used in hard disk drive technology, most commonly used in laptops. It said UoS had developed world-class expertise in the area of nano-photonics - the interaction of nanometer-scale objects with light.

Shares in Earthport have fallen back to 2012 levels after a potential fraud by a corporate client put its Baydonhill foreign exchange business at risk of a potential £5m loss. One corporate customer, which has since been found to have appointed an administrator, reneged on paying its bills and initial investigations "indicate the customer intentionally engaged in fraud".

SafeCharge International announced on Thursday that it has secured a contract with newly-merged bookmaker and online gambling group Paddy Power Betfair. The bookie will use SafeCharge’s Personalised Cashier - a technology-based solution for deposits, withdrawals and diverse alternative payment methods “that optimises all aspects of the payment funnel” - to facilitate the checkout journey of its players globally.

Arian Silver Corporation pressed on with its turnaround plan on Thursday, signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with private company Tierra Nueva Mining (TNM), to evaluate its portfolio of mineral properties in Zacatecas State, Mexico. The AIM-traded company said the MOU provided Arian with the right, for a period of 90 days, to conduct due diligence on TNM's portfolio of interests, which included the option on the Noche Buena hard rock project and 100% ownership of the associated tailings project.

Stratex International’s Djibouti operation, Thani Stratex Resources Limited (TSRL), had good news on Thursday, securing $1.25m (£900,000) of new funding by way of a non-repayable and interest-free convertible loan from NutureEx. The AIM-traded exploration and development company focused on gold and base metals said the new funds would allow TSRL to proceed with an initial drill programme on its licence areas in the Republic of Djibouti.

Frontera Resources settled some sizeable bills on Thursday, through the issue of 100 million new ordinary shares. The AIM-traded independent oil and gas exploration and production company said the issue was for the settlement of $736,000 (£529,000) in fees, due to "certain unrelated third parties for oil field services provided to the company, including workover, drilling, logging and transportation services."

Solid State's £34m contract to provide electronic offender tags has been terminated by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). The AIM-listed company's Steatite subsidiary, which recognised £3.5m of revenue as part of the mobilisation element of the contract in the first half of the year, will discuss terms with the MoJ regarding how the contract will relationship will end.