Blackstone delivers impressive nickel-PGM assays in Vietnam

Blackstone Minerals’ Ban Chang prospect has delivered another set of impressive numbers with a nearly 10 metre long drill intersection going 1.45 per cent nickel, 0.9 per cent copper, 0.08 per cent cobalt and 0.7 grams per tonne platinum, palladium plus gold, from 57.02m down hole. The new result is from a step-out hole at the company’s Ta Khoa nickel-copper-PGM project in Vietnam that was drilled over one kilometre away from Blackstone’s maiden hole at Ban Chang.

The Perth based company has now drilled four initial holes into Ban Chang that look to have defined an emerging discovery.

The mineralisation currently spans 1.2km and assays are still pending from another hole that contained a visual extravaganza of sulphide vein mineralisation over a 15.4m wide zone.

Importantly, the ore zone at Ban Chang looks to be still open to the south east and if the numbers from the 15.4m zone come in anywhere close to the previous drill hits, Ban Chang could be a game changer for Blackstone.

Blackstone Minerals’ Managing Director, Scott Williamson said: “Our latest assays confirmed a new zone of high-grade mineralisation which was previously untested. We have demonstrated strong potential for a bulk underground mining scenario at Ban Chang which could be significantly larger scale than the previously mined Ban Phuc massive sulphide underground mine.”

“[With] … the potential for significant PGE credits, we could be looking at a very economic mining scenario at Ban Chang.”

Blackstone’s in-house geophysics team is looking at further drill targeting of the massive sulphide mineralisation using models of the electromagnetic plates at depth.

Ban Chang is just one - and the first - of Blackstone’s 25 top priority “massive sulphide vein”, or “MSV” prospects at Ta Khoa. They were generated recently from a comprehensive electromagnetic targeting exercise.

Electromagnetics lights up conductive massive sulphides, which can be targeted and followed with the drill rig.

Ban Chang is located just 2.5km south east of the flagship Ban Phuc deposit and the mothballed modern nickel processing facility – it is this processing facility that gives Blackstone a massive financial head start if it can pull together an economic deposit.

The Ban Phuc MSV was mined between 2013 and 2016, producing 20.7Kt of nickel, 10.1Kt of copper and 0.67Kt of cobalt from the vein that was around 1.3m in width. The MSV featured high average grades of 2.4 per cent nickel and 1 per cent copper.

In April, Blackstone raised $6.8M in a placement to South Korean battery materials manufacturer, EcoPro, the world’s 2nd largest nickel-rich battery cathode material manufacturer.

With a committed investor like EcoPro looking to get a piece of Blackstone’s proposed downstream processing action, the company’s emerging potential is getting quite interesting. 

Is your ASX listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au