Wiluna Mining Corporation’s joint-venture partner, A-Cap Energy has raised its stake in their Wilconi nickel-cobalt project near Wiluna, in WA, from 20 to 55 per cent after sinking $5 million into the project as part of its phase 2 earn-in milestone. The transaction comes after an initial $500,000 cash payment to Wiluna and follows a major resource upgrade at the project.
The pair will now look to launch a new drilling campaign at Wilconi that will look to elevate the project’s inferred resources to the higher confidence-indicated and measured categories.
A-Cap has been on a mission to scrub up Wilconi over the past year or so, running out a 11,000m RC infill drilling program last year and tabling a JORC-compliant mineral resource estimate in March this year. As it stands, the company has its hands on 660,000 tonnes of contained nickel and more than 46,000 tonnes of contained cobalt at the operation.
The ASX-listed company followed the March announcement with a 31-hole diamond drilling play about a month later that scored a series of anomalous nickel and cobalt results. The company is looking to advance a prefeasibility study, or “PFS” at Wilconi and earmarked the diamond drilling campaign as a crucial milestone in delivering the report in a market appearing hungry for all things associated to the global electric vehicle market.
A-Cap is now planning a combined 12,000m RC and diamond drilling program to bolster its resources. The probe is earmarked to kick off next quarter.
In addition, the operation is ramping up pilot-scale test work to understand the best method to extract its Wilconi nickel and cobalt from the grounds’ waste material. Management says the zone’s mineralisation is well suited to a number of techniques and believes once complete the operation could emerge as an economical supplier of critical battery metals.
According to the company, batteries with nickel and cobalt are at the tip of the spear for Western economies because of their superior energy density characteristics. Importantly, A-Cap has its hands on both commodities at Wilconi.
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