Centaurus Metals – (ASX: CTM, Share Price: $0.635, Market Cap: $223m, coverage initiated @ $0.135 in May 2017 – current gain of 370%)
Key Catalyst
Drilling at the Jaguar Central Deposit intersects thick semi-massive – massive nickel sulphides, confirming down-dip extensions of previous high-grade intercepts which remain open.
CTM is reaping the rewards of maintaining focused exploration activity, following its recent company-making acquisition of Vale’s 100%-owned Jaguar Nickel Sulphide Project in Brazil. Jaguar represents an at-surface nickel sulphide project, where a maiden JORC 2012-compliant resource of 48.0mt @ 1.08% Ni for 517,500 tonnes of nickel was recently announced to the market. The Jaguar Deposit is unique in the nickel sulphide space, as the high-grade nickel sulphide mineralisation comes almost to surface, whilst also continuing at depth. More than 80% of the nickel metal in the maiden Resource lies within 200m of surface, demonstrating the strong open-pit potential of the Project. Jaguar is already one of the largest near-surface undeveloped nickel sulphide projects in the world and CTM’s deepest hole to date extends to a depth of just 300m, which in a nickel sulphide context means CTM has only just scratched the surface.
Latest Activity
Jaguar Nickel Project Update
CTM has reported more outstanding results from ongoing resource in-fill, extensional and step-out drilling at the Jaguar Central, Jaguar North and Onça Rosa deposits – which form part of its 100%-owned Jaguar Nickel Sulphide Project in the Carajás Mineral Province of northern Brazil.
Step-out drilling at the Jaguar Central Deposit has intersected thick semi-massive to massive nickel sulphides, confirming down-dip extensions of previous high-grade intercepts that remain open at depth and along strike; meanwhile, shallow in-fill drilling at Jaguar Central has intersected significant thick semi-massive to massive nickel sulphides.
Elsewhere, extensional, in-fill and step-out drilling at the Jaguar North Deposit has returned consistent thick and shallow high-grade nickel sulphide intersections; whilst the Onça Rosa discovery continues to grow with a very strong semi-massive to massive nickel sulphide intersection
Figure 1: The Jaguar North Deposit with DHEM conductor plates (dark blue) and FLEM plates (light blue) overlaid on the Ground Magnetics Survey results (RTP).
Jaguar North is hosted within a competent granite with strong magnetite alteration. The mineralisation has been defined to date over 400m of strike, with multiple zones of stringer to semi-massive and massive sulphides up to 25m wide that extend from surface to more than 200m depth and remain open at depth and along strike. The maiden JORC MRE delineated 2.8Mt at 1.14% Ni for 32,300t of contained nickel at the Jaguar North Deposit, with a near-surface High-Grade MRE of 1.5Mt at 1.50%Ni for 22,100t of contained nickel.
Technical Significance
Jaguar is continuing to deliver on its potential of becoming a globally-significant nickel sulphide asset. The ongoing step-out drilling program continues to demonstrate the growth potential of the maiden Jaguar JORC 2012 (MRE) of 48.0Mt at 1.08% Ni for 517,500 tonnes of contained nickel, whilst shallow in-fill and extensional drill holes are expected to enhance and expand the High-Grade MRE of 20.6Mt at 1.56% Ni for 321,400 tonnes of contained nickel.
Notwithstanding the project’s already considerable scale, CTM has moved into an important growth phase – based on an aggressive drilling campaign designed to upgrade the Inferred portions of the Resource to Indicated status, as well as stepping-out beyond the current resource limits as well as targeting the various greenfields opportunities across the Jaguar licence.
The results will form the basis of an updated Mineral Resource in Q1 2021, which will in turn underpin a Scoping Study that should provide a clear forward development pathway that will align with the environmental permitting timeline.
Five rigs are now operating on site – four diamond and one RC – and CTM is planning over 75,000m of drilling over the course of the next 15 months.
Summary
CTM is moving ahead in leaps and bounds with respect to its Jaguar project, a fact reflected in the company’s strong share price performance. The first major milestone for the company was the delivery of its maiden Jaguar JORC 2012-compliant MRE. Ongoing drilling is showing that the mineralisation extends from shallow depths and along strike, is thick, high-grade and consistent. The key is the near-surface nature of the mineralsation – with 80% of the current Resource lying within 200m of surface – meaning mining, costs and grades are more akin to that of an open-pit gold operation.
From a bigger picture perspective, the Jaguar project provides CTM with the opportunity to pursue development of an advanced and well-located nickel sulphide project that offers high-grade open-pit development potential. Nickel sulphide deposits like Jaguar are extremely rare globally and for CTM to be able to successfully acquire such an asset is a game-changer. CTM has risen strongly since initiation and we note recent broker reports with share price targets for CTM of between $0.62 and $0.95 per share.
