Nordic Nickel intersects wide sulphide zone beyond current Finnish nickel-cobalt resource

Recent diamond drilling at Nordic Nickel’s (ASX: NNL) flagship Pulju project in Finland has expanded the footprint of the key Hotinvaara prospect.

This is the farthest south drilling has been undertaken at Hotinvaara and was testing a very large anomaly.

A step-out hole 500m south of the mineral resource estimate (MRE) boundary has intersected disseminated sulphides over a width of 123.8 metres, from 306.5m down hole.

The find is along strike from the 2km main magnetic anomaly and, the company says, has greatly expanded the mineralised footprint and enhanced the prospectivity of this magnetic feature.

Historic data acquired only two years ago

Hotinvaara has a current mineral estimate of 133.8 million tonnes at 0.21% nickel and 0.01% cobalt.

Pulju was drilled by the Finnish nickel giant Outokumpu in the 1980s and 1990s but the program was carried out to only shallow depths and no down-hole geophysics were carried out.

Outokumpu’s data became available only in 2021.

Diamond drilling continues at Hotinvaara with 15,482 metres completed across 28 holes.

‘Reinforces enormous scale’

Hotinvaara covers just 2% of the total Pulju project area.

Managing director Todd Ross said this latest drilling result reinforces the enormous scale and potential of the Pulju project.

“To encounter a broad zone of potential disseminated sulphide mineralisation this far outside the MRE bounds shows that we are only just beginning to understand the true potential of what we have on our hands at Pulju,” he added.

Four new holes hit sulphides

Assays are still pending for 20 of the holes drilled in the recent program.

Pulju lies in Finland’s Central Lapland greenstone belt.

Drilling has resumed after the summer break.

Nordic Nickel says that, based on visual logging, four of the six holes drilled since work resumed have intersected at least minor occurrences of net-textured and semi-massive sulphides.

Each of the new six holes, in addition, have intersected the pervasive disseminated sulphides found during the entire drilling program.

An updated mineral resource estimate is expected by the end of the year.