Toro lands more massive nickel sulphides from WA hunt

Toro Energy has tabled more massive nickel sulphide discoveries at its Dusty nickel project in Western Australia.

The results from its latest campaign show a drill hole intersecting 7.2 metres of visible nickel sulphides, grading 1.05 per cent nickel and 0.26 per cent copper from 252m downhole.

A further diamond drill hole intersected visible nickel-sulphides over 5.7m grading 0.57 per cent nickel from 184m downhole including 0.2m grading 3 per cent nickel, 0.11 per cent copper and 0.1 per cent cobalt from 189.4m.

Whilst drilling is continuing, the assays of core samples come from last year’s diamond drilling program.

The Dusty project falls within Toro’s 100 per cent owned Yandal Gold Project in WA’s Mid West region.

Interestingly, Dusty is only 50km east of the BHP-operated Mt Keith nickel deposit — ranked by the Geological Survey of Western Australia has ranked as number two when it comes to nickel resources.

Toro Executive Chairman Richard Homsany said: “Given the success of the results to date, and how early nickel was discovered in its drill program, Toro is confident it is well poised to continue upgrading the resource potential of its Dusty Nickel project in the short to medium term.”

This year’s diamond drilling campaign at Dusty began in March and continues probing the nickel sulphide discovery of 2020 when Toro announced a 2.6m hit going 3.45 per cent nickel from 184.5m downhole.  

The current exploration focuses on Dusty 1 and Dusty 2 and further work along the Dusty komatiite rock unit.

However, the company warns that COVID-19-related staffing issues at WA laboratories are likely to cause delays in the company getting drilling results.

Toro’s nickel announcement comes hard on the heels of its plans released earlier this month to rejig its uranium prospects.

A pit re-optimisation study at Lake Maitland in WA ticked off the idea of a stand-alone uranium-vanadium operation, with a big increase in potential ore, a 50 per cent increase in potential uranium production and 12.2 million lbs of vanadium pentoxide as a byproduct.

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