Drilling beneath Poseidon Nickel’s (ASX: POS) Black Swan open pit has unearthed massive high-grade disseminated nickel sulphide intersections.
Poseidon has now completed phase one drilling under the Black Swan pit with an initial hole intersecting 223.1m at 1.02% nickel from 900m.
The intersection includes 74m at 1.5% nickel.
Another hole intersected 292m of disseminated mineralisation, with assays pending.
According to Poseidon, the new intersections confirm historical drill holes which yielded 180m at 0.74% nickel, including 42m at 1.22% nickel; and 109m at 1.01% nickel, including 51m at 1.36% nickel on the hanging wall.
Poseidon’s strategy is to investigate the opportunity that exists beneath the known resources and reserves at Black Swan, with the deposit hosting a resource of 30.7 million tonnes at 0.6% nickel.
The company’s next step at Black Swan will involve a review of the latest results in conjunction with historic data.
Mineralisation will be reinterpreted and integrated with the original Black Swan open pit data to assess the economic potential of the disseminated mineralisation and an underground mining operation.
Black Swan includes the open pit mine, Silver Swan underground asset and the 2.2 million tonne per annum sulphide concentrator and supporting infrastructure.
Silver Swan
In addition to exploration at Black Swan, Poseidon is anticipating results from diamond drilling at the high-grade Silver Swan decline to test additional opportunities that arose after evaluation of the resource.
The company expects results from Silver Swan this month.
In anticipation of an operational restart, underground refurbishment at Silver Swan is underway to enable safe access for mining and exploration drilling.
Located 60km from Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia, Silver Swan is one of the world’s highest grade nickel deposits with an unmined resource of 136,000t at 9.19% nickel for 12,400t of contained nickel metal.
Across its suite of WA-based nickel projects, Poseidon’s resource base includes 391,900t of contained nickel metal.
Shares in Poseidon soared on today’s news, up 5.71% to $0.037 by mid-afternoon.
