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NICKel CoNFeReNCe PReVIeW

Auroch’s inevitable quest

hen Aidan Platel joined Auroch Min- ed in the nickel. I think the opportunity is Downhole EM surveys will be completed
Werals Ltd last year, it seemed inevi- there.” on all drill holes in a bid to generate further
table the company would soon be chas- A 3,000m diamond drilling programme near-resource targets for the next phase of
ing nickel. kicked off at Saints, 65km north-west of drilling. High-priority targets have already
Platel – one of the geologists credited Kalgoorlie, last month with a view towards been identified at the St Patricks and St
with the discovery of Santa Rita for Mirab- confirming historical data and high-grade Andrews prospects.
ela Nickel some 15 years ago – was pro- intersections which formed the basis for “There are some downhole EM plates
moted to the managing director’s chair at the existing resource of 1.05mt @ 2% con- hanging off the current resource…so
Auroch last month, having just completed taining 21,400t nickel. some fairly obvious extensions, dare I say
the acquisition of the Saints and Leinster it,” Platel said.
nickel projects from Minotaur Exploration “Because it is komatiite nickel, it is chal-
Ltd. lenging to drill but certainly there are some
“We see nickel as the commodity to be areas where you could drill and grow the
in for the next 3-5 years, at least,” Platel resource organically and relatively easily,
told Paydirt. and that’s what we’re going to attack with
“It still fits our Australian base metals our upcoming drilling.
strategy, but clearly nickel is the one stand- “I think with each drilling programme
ing out at the moment. And these things we’ll try to organically grow the current re-
usually have a fair bit of copper and cobalt source as well as do the step-by-step – or
in them as well, so that’s the kind of the the slog – on the exploration and have a
strategy we went for and hopefully there’s crack at finding the ‘golden nugget’ down
a couple more acquisitions to come along. below.”
“We’re looking for those forgotten assets Leinster is less advanced than Saints, al-
that are cheap deals, especially in those though the project does host a non-JORC
greenstone belts where a lot of companies compliant resource of 600,000t @ 1.39%
are gold-focused and not really interest- nickel and 0.3% copper containing 8,400t
Aidan Platel

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Page 98 OCTOBeR 2019 aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT