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EUROPE

S2 comfortable

in Nordic outback

ashed up and with no restrictions on widespread cover on its licences on the
Cgeography or commodity, Mark Ben- Central Lapland greenstone belt. Some
nett decided Finland had the potential 15,000 samples were taken in the sur-
to deliver the kind of project the S2 Re- vey, two distinct gold anomalous cor-
sources Ltd team has become synony- ridors stretching 4-5km identified at the
mous with. Aarnivalkea prospect. The survey al-
“Finland is not without its challenges lowed S2 to home in on Aarnivalkea as
but then nowhere is,” Bennett explained its first major target and was followed up
to Paydirt. “It has a long mining his- by reconnaissance base-of-till drilling to
tory but not much of a modern mining better define the anomaly.
culture; exploration as we know it is not “The ionic leach survey was really a
really a thing there. The junior sector is last gasp effort and it worked a treat,”
not well understood. You have the Gov- Bennett said. “It gave us a big corridor
ernment doing the survey work and then for which we applied for licences then we
the majors and mid-tiers such as Anglo began a wide-spaced reconnaissance
American [plc] and Boliden Mines [plc]. diamond drilling programme and in that
That big gap below the majors is where drilling we got everything we were look-
we are looking. There is nobody with a ing for; it confirmed the presence of the
desire to find the kind of projects juniors shear zone, it had all the styles of altera-
discover all the time in Australia.” tion you look for in any good deposit and
Formed following Independence it had the gold anomalism.”
Group NL’s acquisition of Sirius Re- While the initial diamond drilling was
sources in 2015, S2 had the sort of finan- designed only to test the presence of
cial and investor backing most juniors the structures underneath the anomaly it
can only dream of with $22 million in the also returned high-grade mineralisation,
bank and a shareholder base still loyal including 6m @ 5.4 g/t gold.
from the Nova nickel discovery success. Bennett said the early drilling had S2 has had considerable success using base-of-till drilling as a first-pass exploration technique
Bennett said the circumstances al- proven S2’s approach was correct, now
lowed S2 time and space needed to the task is to clearly define the extent of prospects with drilling expected to con-
make another Nova-like discovery. the mineralisation. tinue throughout the Finnish winter.
“Our approach is different to the other In October, S2 announced further drill- “It has proven the theory and given us
Australian companies who have come ing results from Aarnivalkea, including a technique we know we can use but it
to Sweden and Finland,” he said. “They hits of 13.97m @ 1.8 g/t, 2.01m @ 18.4 is still early days and there is a lot more
mostly picked up projects originally iden- g/t and 6.46m @ 2 g/t gold. Gold min- work to do,” Bennett said. “We are very
tified by Outokumpo or Boliden. We went eralisation has now been defined over surgical in the way we do things. If a pro-
in with a mindset that there hadn’t been a 200m strike with the drilling showing ject doesn’t stack up quickly, we will pull
much effective exploration therefore multiple parallel lodes, a sign the pros- out early because we have got plenty of
there was a classic greenfields oppor- pect could host the size of deposit S2 is things to spend money on. A lot of peo-
tunity. looking for. ple, having gone to the effort of convinc-
“We can take a textbook approach to At the Aakenusvaara prospect, a best ing the market about a project’s merits,
exploration, which not many juniors can intercept of 2.11m @ 86 g/t gold was re- feel reluctant to move on if it doesn’t
do that anymore. We are more like an ex- ported from 50m down-dip of an histori- show up. We aren’t afraid to move on,
ploration department of a bigger compa- cal hit of 11.62m @ 3.8 g/t gold. Bennett there is no falling in love with an asset or
ny and our shareholders understand our said while the high-grade intersections keeping it for lifestyle purposes.
approach because we inherited them were welcomed, grade wasn’t the ulti- “We have probably only worked 20%
from Sirius.” mate target of the programme. in Finland. So, if this project doesn’t pan
The time has been needed. Unlike “The results are much better than ex- out there’s more than enough to move
Western Australia, Finland has little pected, particularly as this is the first onto.”
available geological information, leaving drilling in an entirely new area,” he said. While Bennett is happy with S2’s
S2 to undertake a lot of the early stage “I think some people see us using a dia- spread of gold and nickel assets in Fin-
work itself. mond rig and think we are looking for ore land, WA and Nevada he maintains a
“The Government has done a lot of grade intercepts from every hole but this watching brief across the global explora-
countrywide geophysics and geochem is first-pass drilling, the kind you would tion sector.
but there is a lack of open file data,” Ben- usually use RC or aircore for. What we “We are still busy looking for other
nett said. still don’t know is if we are in the best things and we have a lot of opportuni-
The company started with an ionic part of the shear zone yet.” ties presented to us,” he said. “There are
leach survey designed to overcome the The company is following up at both

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