Lunnon Metals hits more nickel sulphides at Warren channel
Lunnon Metals managing director Ed Ainscough says the widths and style of nickel mineralisation in the daughter drill hole at Warren are consistent with the previous parent hole.
Junior explorer Lunnon Metals (ASX: LM8) has intersected more nickel sulphides in the latest round of drilling on the Warren channel, which is part of the Foster mine at its Kambalda nickel project in Western Australia.
A downhole transient electromagnetic (DHTEM) survey of the area recorded a high conductance / late time response coincident with the presence of previously reported nickel sulphide intersection of 8.72m grading 3.54% nickel on the prospective komatiite-basalt contact.
Drilling by wedging off the parent hole hit nickel sulphides approximately 20m up-dip from the parent hole and at the exact down hole depth predicted by the 55m by 40m DHTEM plate.
A daughter diamond hole was also logged as having an 8.5m zone (from 343.5m) of variably disseminated to matrix nickel sulphide mineralisation, including massive nickel sulphides in the last 1.05m of the intercept, hosted immediately on the basalt contact.
Field analysis of these zones using a portable XRF (x-ray fluorescence) unit confirmed the presence of nickel.
Warren resource
Lunnon’s work aims to demonstrate that the Warren channel – which is a separate nickel mineralised region in its own right – has the potential to host substantially more than its current 6,400 tonne resource of nickel metal.
The adjacent Foster channel has an endowment of close to 94,000t at 2.92% nickel, with more than 61,000t extracted prior to the mine’s closure in 1994 and 32,600t included in the project’s current official mineral resource estimate.
Lunnon’s objective at Warren is to target a prospective nickel contact between the broad drill spacing left by previous owner WMC Resources when the mine closed.
Second daughter
Lunnon managing director Ed Ainscough said a second daughter hole would be drilled to confirm results to date.
“We gain great confidence when we hit the type of nickel mineralisation we see in the daughter hole at exactly the right downhole depth,” he said.
“Drilling an additional second daughter hole and two extra surface holes into this plate will complete our program to fill the ‘gap’ in WMC’s drill coverage … the widths and style of nickel mineralisation in the daughter look very consistent with the parent, which bodes well for our plan to link up this mineralisation and add it to our existing mineral resource at Warren.”