After being sold off heavily in the past month, shares in Chalice Mining leapt 13% on Thursday after the company surprised with news of a completely new exploration area of interest at its world class Julimar Ni-Cu-PGE strike northeast of Perth.
The new area has been named Dampier and lies 10 kilometres north of the Gonneville prospect, the company’s first and biggest discovery at Julimar which already is known to contain more than 330 million tonnes of nickel, copper, gold, platinum, palladium and cobalt.
The company revealed several new areas of interest in addition to the original four, led by the massive Gonneville discovery. Based on yesterday’s statement there could now be 8 or more areas of interest along the strike zone, or adjacent in areas not known to contain mineralisation. That’s up from four, led by Gonnville.
Chalice reported that across three wide-spaced holes it had intersected a 15- to 80-metre wide zone of disseminated sulphides (averaging 1-3% sulphide), with locally abundant matrix sulphides (up to 20% to 30% sulphide) within an interlayered sequence of ultramafic to mafic intrusive rocks.
“This is the first significant indication of orthomagmatic sulphide mineralisation outside of the Gonneville Deposit itself and is considered an exciting result which demonstrates the highly prospective nature of the Julimar Complex for additional Ni-Cu-PGE discoveries,” Chalice said in the ASX release.
The news saw the shares spike to a day’s high of $4.35 before settling back and closing at $4, up 6.6%.
Initial diamond drill testing of the greenfield Dampier Target, located 10km north of Gonneville, has generated exciting early visual results,” Chalice told the ASX.
“The new zone of orthomagmatic sulphide mineralisation at Dampier highlights the prospectivity of this sector of the 30km long Julimar Complex (it was 26 kilometres to start with), with several nearby targets (Hamelin and Hann, at the northern end of the Hartog area) along strike now prioritised for immediate drilling>
“Initial geological observations suggest that the package of mineralised pyroxenite and lesser peridotite/gabbro intersected at Dampier has a similar intrusive geology to that intersected at the Gonneville Intrusion, including broad zones of weakly disseminated sulphides (pyrrhotite dominant) and locally developed heavy disseminated to matrix/semi-massive sulphides
“Assay results for selective intervals of HD010 indicate the presence of PGEs consistent with the weakly disseminated sulphide mineralisation throughout this interval.
“A total of 13 diamond drill holes have been completed at the Hartog-Dampier targets to date, with assays pending for five completed holes (HD009-HD013). Assays for the three new holes at Dampier are expected within six weeks.”
The next major milestones for the Julimar Project are the Gonneville Mineral Resource Estimate update (due shortly) and the Gonneville Scoping Study, which is targeted for Q3 2022.
The Company said it is progressing development studies for the Gonneville Deposit in parallel to testing the overall scale of the Gonneville mineral system and initial exploration activities across the 30km long Julimar Complex.
The following activities are ongoing or planned at the Project:
- Exploration drilling at the Hartog-Dampier Targets within the Julimar State Forest – four diamond drill rigs are currently operational and expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Existing approvals allow multiple holes to be drilled from each of the ~70 planned sites.
- Moving Loop Electromagnetic (MLEM) and Down-hole EM surveys are continuing across the Julimar Complex.
- Resource definition and exploration RC/diamond drilling at the Gonneville Deposit – three rigs are operational, largely focused on wide-spaced extensional/exploration drilling which is expected to continue for the foreseeable future, subject to results.
- Processing of the initial 2D seismic survey of the Gonneville-Hartog area is underway, which was acquired to assess the overall architecture of the intrusive complex at depth – results are expected in Q3.
- Mine development studies to support a Scoping Study for the initial development stage of the Gonneville Deposit.
