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Seismic’s LMP 2000
multipurpose rig in action at
Nepean. Auroch has the rig
locked in for the next 12 months

Nepean gives Auroch another
string to its nickel portfolio

fast-track everything, but you need that by WMC.
info to develop the targets and now we Focus Minerals Ltd was the most re-
have the rig locked in we will be ready cent owner of Nepean, however, its fo-
for the next round of drilling,” Platel said. cus on the nearby Coolgardie gold pro-
The rig is currently being deployed ject has meant modern exploration at the
at Nepean where it is undertaking a nickel asset has been severely lacking.
3,500m RC drilling campaign. Therefore, there was great interest
By mid-March a total of 20 holes for from technical geologists when Auroch
2,400m had been completed, with lat- announced its stake in Nepean and the
est assays received at the time of print company’s proof-of-concept was sub-
including further near-mine, high-grade stantiated by a hit early on in the maiden
nickel sulphide intersections of 2m @ RC programme of 3m @ 3.7% nickel and
2% nickel and 0.3% copper from 66m, 0.33% copper from 91m, including 2m
including 1m @ 2.9% nickel and 0.36% @ 5.09% nickel and 0.47% copper from
copper from 66m; 4m @ 0.77% nickel 91m; 1m @ 5.57% nickel and 0.25% cop-
and 0.05% copper from 25m, including per from 60m; 2m @ 3.02% nickel and
1m @ 0.94% nickel and 0.05% copper 0.3% copper from 55m; 3m @ 1.35%
from 66m. nickel and 0.1% copper from 40m, within
The company had planned to drill five a broader zone of 18m @ 0.76% nickel
more holes to further test key areas of and 0.02% copper from 25m.
the shallow, near-mine, high-grade min- “There has been no exploration done
eralisation identified at Nepean, while a for 10-15 years on this ground and we’ve
high-powered ground moving loop elec- had a lot of people look at that 10km
tromagnetic (MLEM) survey over priority strike and say what a great pick-up Ne-
target areas of the 10km of strike was pean is. There are basically no drill holes
also planned for March. in it and it is directly along strike from a
Despite inheriting a “messy” dataset known very high-grade mine, with some
upon acquisition of the 13 tenements immediate mag features that no-one has
making up Nepean, Auroch is nearly actually had a look at,” Platel said.
through the arduous task of piecing to- “I guess that is the story of WA and
gether information left behind by the six Australia, but particularly WA, with the
previous owners of what was Australia’s mentality of being a Tier 1 jurisdiction
second-ever producing nickel sulphide that has been picked to pieces. Realis-
mine. tically, a lot of these belts were held by
In the period 1970-1987, a total of bigger companies with massive land-
1.1mt for 32,202t nickel metal at an av- holdings. Therefore, when a discovery
erage recovered grade of 2.99% nickel is made that becomes the complete fo-
was mined and processed at Kambalda cus, leaving lower ranked targets by the

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT aPRIL 2021 Page 15