After nailing down a brace of new targets at Venture Minerals’ South West nickel-copper-PGE project about 240km south of Perth, ASX-listed Chalice Mining has decided to commit to the second phase of the duo’s joint venture agreement. As part of the deal, Chalice will plough in an additional $2.5 million on exploration over the next two years to claim a 70 per cent stake in the operation.
The outlay ups Chalice’s phase one stake in the South West project by 19 per cent and follows an initial exploration spend of $1.2 million.
Under the agreement Chalice will continue to work up Venture’s previously completed exploration at the site and test for nickel-copper-PGE sulphides in mafic intrusive complexes.
According to Chalice, its two recently defined targets are related to a raft of interpreted ultramafic rocks that offer coincidental magnetic and airborne electromagnetic responses to those unveiled at its previously discovered Thor target — a significant, 20km-long magnetic anomaly that has been tagged by the partnership as a “Julimar lookalike”.
Thor is considered under-explored and takes in about half a dozen airborne electro magnetic anomalies and mineralised massive sulphides.
Chalice turned plenty of heads with its Gonneville nickel-copper-PGE discovery at the Julimar project, about 70km north-east of Perth, about two years ago. The find is considered to be the world’s largest sulphide discovery since 2000 and the largest PGE discovery in Australia.
Recent figures from Gonneville point to a 350 million tonne resource at about 0.58 per cent nickel equivalent or 1.8 grams per tonne palladium equivalent.
The discovery sent its share price from a low of 16 cents in March 2020 to nearly $10 dollars early this year before easing off. The company is currently trading at $4.64 a share.
According to Venture, a previous airborne electromagnetic survey at the project turned up over half a dozen conductive anomalies within Thor’s southern extensions and only two have ever been drill-tested.
The company says several strike kilometres along Thor remain untested by geochemical and electromagnetic programs, suggesting Venture and Chalice could have a new target analogous to the anomaly.
In addition to its work with Chalice, Venture is reviewing the economics of an underground mine at its Mount Lindsay tin-tungsten project in Tasmania as part of a feasibility study at the operation.
The work comes after a massive, almost 120m tin hit in February that went 0.8 per cent tin and 0.2 per cent tungsten from 75.8m. In what will bode well for the project’s numbers, the monster tin hit housed a richer, 20m-plus component that graded 1.7 per cent tin equivalent from 75.8m.
The price of nickel is currently floating around US$23,500 per tonne, rising from July lows of sub-US$20,000 per tonne off the back of production fears.
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