Horizon Minerals has returned from the field with a bag of encouraging multi-element assays after first pass drilling at the company’s Lakewood project, 20 kilometres southeast of Kalgoorlie in WA. The anomalous platinum-palladium-nickel-cobalt results come from an initial 59-hole air-core program totalling 3002 metres over four priority targets within the 90 square kilometre project area.
The drilling was into sediments lying over an intrusive unit – high in iron and magnesium – and returned shallow, highly-anomalous mineralisation in the weathered profile.
Significant composite results include 8m going 206 parts per billion platinum and 35ppb palladium from surface, 8m running 131ppb platinum, 14ppb palladium, 726 parts per million nickel, 119ppm cobalt from 20m and another 4m yielding 33ppb platinum, 77ppb palladium and 417ppm nickel from 32m.
The maximum 4m composite results of 259ppb platinum, 77ppb palladium, 807ppm nickel and 162ppm cobalt, combined with elevated readings of silver, arsenic, gold, cadmium, copper, lead and zinc, suggest that Horizon may have a genuine polymetallic cocktail on its hands.
Single metre split samples have been sent to the lab, with Horizon anticipating results as early as the current quarter.
Horizon plans to wheel the rig back to Lakewood for further drilling along strike and beneath the anomalous mineralised zones once the bit has chewed through the ongoing gold and nickel program at the company’s Cannon project further east.
The assayed holes at Lakewood come from the explorer’s mammoth 50,000m 2021 drill program that aimed to define its resources and discover new targets across its expansive 1100 square kilometre portfolio. The deeper aim of the program was to grow the company’s project pipeline within a 75km radius of the mineral rich city of Kalgoorlie.
Typical of a lot of projects east of Kalgoorlie, the Lakewood project is extensively veiled in sediments, leaving virtually no outcrop to physically prospect. Notably, only a small portion of soils are considered in-situ, with most of the cover being extremely young and transported from other regions.
As a consequence of its youthful and uncultured mineral history, in addition to its foreign origin, the veiling sediments will likely be devoid of any real indication of what lies below - leaving Horizon to run through its pocketbook of explorative methods to find the source.
The explorer turned to gravity work in 2021 that interpreted a linear zone of deep-seated rocks – high in magnesium and iron – extending across Lakewood at a regional scale.
As Horizon believes many of the region’s nickel and platinum group metal occurrences are associated with deep crustal structures, it plunged two lines of air-core holes into its key target – being the most intense signature on its gravity map.
Horizon says the results coming out of the structure demonstrate the potential for significant primary mineralisation at depth and along strike with multiple targets yet to be tested.
Next time Horizon comes back with the rig, it will go after the remaining gravity, magnetic and structural targets in addition to drilling beneath the anomalous polymetallic zone.
Three other targets were tested as the rig passed over Lakewood. They had been drilled before and historically threw up encouraging grades – including a 4m hit going 10.81 grams per tonne gold from 56m.
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