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Hits keep coming for nickel juniors

ickel exploration’s breakout year contin- The intercept confirmed Azure’s target, a from the nearby Silver Swan underground
Nued in November with Azure Minerals large EM conductor identified during a re- mine in order to drill Golden Swan from un-
Ltd and Poseidon Nickel Ltd announcing cent fixed loop EM campaign. The conduc- derground and test the rest of the Southern
new discoveries, and Estrella Resources tor is around 1,050m east-west, 150-200m Terrace for additional mineralised zones.
Ltd continuing its exploration success while vertical and remains unconstrained at depth, Given its proximity to the underground
Panoramic Resources Ltd is showing signs down-dip to the north. and surface infrastructure of Silver Swan
of operational revival. Rovira said the success of the first dia- and Black Swan, Golden Swan could be
Azure perhaps landed the best results mond holes at Andover meant the company quickly turned into a mining proposition.
with positive assays and further intersects was confident assays from ANDD0004 “We are also in a unique position to be
from its recently acquired Andover nickel- would show similar numbers. able to drill out the Golden Swan minerali-
copper project south-east of Karratha in “The strongly mineralised intersection in sation quickly and then determine the most
Western Australia. It shares were up 200% ANDD0004 leads us to believe that if the appropriate way to exploit this mineralisa-
in November to 96c at the time of print. 1km-long conductor plate is similarly miner- tion, should it prove economic,” Poseidon
On November 9, Azure reported hits from alised throughout, there is excellent potential managing director Peter Harold said.
drill hole ANDD0001 of 3.9m @ 2.85% here for a major new nickel-copper deposit.” Estrella is also treading historical ground
nickel and 0.47% copper and 5m @ 2.09% If Azure believes it is onto a new deposit in with its T5 discovery on the Carr Boyd Rocks
nickel and 1.14% copper, contained within a relatively new nickel province, Poseidon is project near Kalgoorlie.
an overall mineralised envelope of 39.7m @ confident it can get a new tune out of an old The T5 discovery hole, announced in Oc-
0.95% nickel and 0.52% copper from 81.6m. instrument. On November 20, the company tober, returned hits of 2.5m @ 3.66% nickel,
A second diamond hole, ANDD0002 announced it had intersected a “strongly 0.46% copper, 2.09 g/t silver and 0.78 g/t
returned a hit of 4.6m @ 2.41% nickel and mineralised” interval of 6.4m (3.7m true gold plus PGMs and 3.7m @ 2.85% nickel,
0.48% copper from 113m within a broader width) of massive/matrix nickel sulphides 0.65% copper, 0.13% cobalt, 2.58 g/t silver
interval of 13.6m @ 1.19% nickel and 0.38% in the latest hole drilled into its new Golden and 0.75 g/t gold plus PGMs.
copper from 104m. Swan nickel discovery, part of the Silver The latest hole, completed on November
The holes are the first to be drilled into An- Swan nickel project. 19, contained 25.7m of nickel-copper bear-
dover by Azure, but the company is already The first holes were drilled into Golden ing massive, matrix, disseminated and brec-
confident it will prove a genuine deposit. Swan in March to test a new EM plate on cia sulphides. The intercept was consistent
“While we’re still at an early stage of our what the company has called the South- with the EM plate conductor.
exploration, the intersection of good widths ern Terrace position. The first two holes hit Panoramic’s deep success had nothing
of nickel and copper sulphide mineralisation 23.1m @ 4% nickel and 0.4% copper (13.3m to do with exploration. Instead, the inves-
at shallow depths bodes well for further suc- true width), including 7.6m @ 8.8% nickel tors reacted positively to news the company
cess,” Azure managing director Tony Rovira (4.3m true width) and 9m @ 10.46% nickel was making better than expected progress
said. (4.5m true width), including 4.6m @ 13.8% on ventilation works at its Savannah North
The encouraging assay results were fol- nickel (2.3m true width). nickel orebody.
lowed three days later by visual interpreta- The newest hole confirms the continuity of Operations at Savannah were suspend-
tion of the fourth hole ANDD0004 showing the EM plate representing a 170m by 60m ed in April as the company battled seismic
38.1m of multiple zones of nickel-copper sul- orebody. events, equipment availability issues and
phide mineralisation from 336.1m. The company will now develop a drill drive ventilation problems. However, since re-
drawing the mine plan to focus on Savan-
nah North, the company’s fortunes have
improved.
The ventilation raise – being undertaken
by RUC Mining – is taking place in parallel
with a seven-month capital development
programme designed to open up a mini-
mum of four levels at Savannnah North. Un-
derground mining contractor Barminco has
opened the 1401, 1381 and 1361 levels while
the 1341 level was expected to be intersect-
ed before the end of November.
Panoramic managing director Victor Ra-
jasooriar said the programme was within
budget and “well ahead of plan”.
“Completion of the ventilation shaft is a
critical piece of work which will enable Sa-
vannah to be in a position where the com-
pany can consider the resumption of mining
and processing operations in mid-2021,” he
said.

The massive nickel-copper sulphides, including this core from Azure, have been coming out – Dominic Piper
of the ground thick and fast across WA recently

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT DeCeMBeR 2020 - JaNUaRY 2021 Page 19