Chalice Mining is being knocked down in the rush of global companies wanting to get involved with the mining, processing and selling of the renewable metals to be produced by the company’s huge Gonneville palladium, platinum, gold, copper, nickel and cobalt in WA.
Chalice is heading towards a very different 2023 than planned a year ago as the size and richness of its Gonneville find becomes more attractive to companies and investors across the globe (but not in Australia it seems).
Now the company is setting up a data room for the dozens of companies looking to play a part in producing and using the metals to come from the mine.
At least 40 companies are expected to ask Chalice to participate in the data room (after signing strict confidentiality agreements). They range from major mining companies, established car makers and emerging electric vehicle groups.
Industry reports say companies like Anglo American, the big South African miner, will be looking closely at Gonneville and Chalice because of the worsening situation in southern Africa where Anglo is based.
Glencore has shown its hand by bidding for Teck on a break up basis for the coal businesses and looking to grow its green metals (copper, nickel and cobalt).
Glencore would be a prime candidate for Chalice’s plans.
US car giants like Ford and GM, the European-US car group Stellantis, VW and Daimler from Germany, plus Tesla from the US and Toyota from Japan, are reportedly interested in Chalice’s plans for a multi-pronged development approach to Gonneville.
On top of this, millions of dollars in assistance are expected from the Australian government’s $A15 billion fund designed to help the production of strategic products such as renewable metals.
Because of the structures of the US Inflation Reduction Act and its $US369 billion in assistance for renewables (EVS, solar power, charging networks, electricity grids etc), Chinese companies will not be able to play a part in the development of Gonneville and future mines along the 30-kilometre line of strike at Julimar, 70 kms northeast of Perth.
But recent agreements between Japan, Canada and looming with the EU will allow major companies from those regions to access Gonneville’s riches.
Effectively there could be three separate parts to Chalice by the end of this year.
To these ends, Chalice has quietly restructured itself in recent months.
In mid-March the company revealed that long-time Chief Financial Officer Richard Hacker has been appointed to the newly-created role of General Manager – Strategy and Commercial, with a specific focus on strategic partnering options for the 100%-owned Julimar Project in WA. Chalice said he will also lead business development activities with a continued focus on the new West Yilgarn Ni-Cu-PGE Province in WA.
He will be succeeded by Chris MacKinnon, who has been Chalice’s Business Development and Legal Manager since 2020.” Under the role of CFO, Mr MacKinnon will also work closely with the Managing Director and CEO on investor relations and external communications.”
These two changes followed the key appointment in mid-January of experienced mining executive Mr Mike Nelson to the newly- created role of General Manager – Project Development.
Chalice said he “will lead all aspects of the studies and development of the Julimar Nickel-Copper-Platinum Group Element (PGE) Project in Western Australia, with his appointment marking another important step in the Company’s advancement of its world-class, green metals asset.”
This means that CEO Alex Dorsch now has a team to oversee the multi-pronged operations of the company and its progress in bringing Gonneville into production.
After Gonneville, there next targets of interest are the Hartog- Dampier and Hooley prospects.
Chalice says the Hartog is assumed to be a continuation of the Gonneville prospect that has been disrupted by a fault. Two holes have been drilled into the Hartog area with assays pending.
“The updated Resource for Gonneville is interpreted to cover just 7% of the 30km long Julimar Complex. 100 drill holes have now been completed along the Hartog-Hooley-Dampier target areas across ~10km of strike length, with several significant results already reported. Assays remain pending for 42 of these holes, Chalice said.
The Hooley’s prospect is starting to loom as the next potential mining areas. Early work has worked out there’s around 3 kilometres of ground along the line of strike with mineralisation readings.
Last December Chalice reported what it called “significant” platinum group element (PGE)-dominant sulphide mineralisation during initial drilling at the greenfield prospect
The mineralisation was intersected in all five reconnaissance holes from three drill sites over a 1.8-kilometre strike length (now extended to around 3kms).
Assay results included 69 metres at 0.9 grams per tonne (g/t) platinum group elements, 0.1 per cent nickel, 0.1 per cent copper, and 0.01 per cent cobalt from 312 metres.
