Mining

Lunnon Metals unearths more high-grade nickel from Warren channel

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By Lorna Nicholas - 
Lunnon Metals ASX LM8 Baker Shoot high-grade nickel exploration

Latest assays from drilling at the Baker target within Lunnon Metals’ Kambalda project returned a highlight interval of 2.7m at 10.72% nickel.

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Lunnon Metals (ASX: LM8) has unearthed more high-grade nickel in the Warren channel target within its Kambalda project in Western Australia.

Latest assays from drilling at Warren returned highlight intercepts of 9.05m at 2.82% nickel from 343.45m, including 3.8m at 4.84% nickel from 348.45m.

Further down plunge, three wedge holes also hit nickel, with results of 4.8m at 3.09% nickel from 498.6m; 3.05m at 1.51% nickel from 501.75m, including 0.95m at 1.96% nickel from 541.45m; and 1.6m at 1.18% nickel from 507.5m.

Lunnon managing director Ed Ainscough said these latest drill results had filled in the “gaps” the previous explorer WMC Resources had left in its “very broad” spaced drilling in the 1990s.

He said Lunnon’s drilling had identified more nickel 400m down plunge of limited historical mining.

The company plans to extend drilling further down plunge at Warren and the other side of the Jardiniere Trough structure that WMC had also previously drilled.

Discovering nickel

Lunnon’s strategy at Warren is to demonstrate it is a separate nickel channel in its own right within the historical Foster mine.

Warren currently has 6,400t in contained nickel resources, with Lunnon anticipating it has the potential to “substantially” build on this resource through further drilling.

The adjacent Foster channel is 1.5km to the southeast of Warren and has an endowment of 94,000t nickel at 2.92%.

Of this, 61,000t was mined previously with 32,600t remaining in resources.

Lunnon expects to reveal a resource “shortly” for the N75C, 18C and 24C nickel shoots within the Foster mine area.

Kambalda nickel project

Lunnon owns 100% of the mineral rights covering the Kambalda nickel project, which comprises 19 granted mining leases.

The project spans 23 square kilometres and is 70km from the town of Kambalda in a known nickel district.

This nickel district has produced more than 1.4Mt of of the metal since WMC discovered it in 1966.

It is also prospective for gold, with almost 15Moz of the precious metal mined from the region.