Chalice Mining has further confirmed the world-class potential of its Julimar metals complex area northeast of Perth with a third major strike – a discovery the company described yesterday as “promising”.
The news saw the company’s shares surge by more than 13% to $6.30 at the close as investors piled into the shares.
Chalice shares are now up more than 59% in the past three months – just on 40% in the last month alone.
Chalice has already shown the quality of the area with the huge initial Gonneville discovery – which is growing – and its minimum of 350 million tonnes of nickel, copper, palladium, platinum, gold and cobalt.
Gonneville is already the biggest sulphide-based nickel discovery this century and the biggest ever find of platinum, palladium and gold (so-called 3E metals) in this country.
It had previously announced at least two new areas of mineralisation further along the Julimar line of strike – now yesterday’s announcement confirms a third.
On Thursday it surprised the market by revealing the first assays from an area on the line of strike called Dooleys that had not been mentioned (unlike Gonneville, Hartog, Dampier and Baudin which are other higher prospective discoveries of areas of interest).
According to the release, drilling activities at the greenfield Hooley Prospect, about 5 kilometres north of the current Gonneville Resource, have intersected significant PGE-nickel-copper-cobalt-gold mineralisation in initial drilling.
Chalice said that sulphide mineralisation has been intersected in all five reconnaissance holes from three drill sites over ~1.8k metres of strike length.
Assays are pending for a further nine holes and downhole electromagnetics are currently underway, after which a more definitive interpretation can be made regarding the scale and significance of the newly discovered mineralisation.
And Chalice said that while it notes that the geology and mineralisation at Hooley is quite variable, the high-grade mineralisation encountered so far in initial reconnaissance drilling “is considered highly encouraging and highlights the prospectivity of this section of the Julimar Complex.”
Looking ahead, the company said that exploration will continue along the Complex targeting extensions to known mineralised zones as well as potential new shallow high-grade zones.
The company said wide-spaced drilling is continuing along 10 kilometres of the Julimar strike zone at the Hooley, Dampier and Hartog prospects.
Assay results from the holes reported yesterday included 69 metres at 0.9 grams per tonne (g/t) platinum group elements, (That’s palladium, platinum and gold or 3E), 0.1% nickel, 0.1% copper, and 0.01% cobalt from 312 metres. This included 3.4 metres at 11.5 g/t 3E, 0.1% nickel, 0.2% copper, 0.01% cobalt from 370.6 metres.
Another hole revealed 40 metres at 1.6 grams to the tonne 3E, 0.2% nickel, 0.2% copper and 0.02% Cobalt. That included 28 metres at 2.1 grams to the tonne 3E, 0.2% nickel, 0.2% 0.3% copper and 0.02% cobalt.
