Azure has reached a major milestone with the definition of a maiden resource of some 75,000t of contained nickel and copper for the Andover deposit.
Adding further excitement, the 4.8Mt resource grading 1.11% nickel, 0.47% copper and 0.05% cobalt for the deposit within its Andover joint venture project with the Creasy Group (40%), includes a high-grade component of 2Mt at 1.41% nickel, 0.49% copper and 0.06% cobalt.
Resource certainty is also high with over 80% of the resource classified in the Indicated category, which provides enough confidence for mine planning.
And this is only the beginning with Azure Minerals (ASX:AZS) managing director Tony Rovira saying that additional resources were likely to be defined at the nearby Ridgeway, Seaview and Skyline prospects.
Drilling at Ridgeway had returned results such as 6.3m at 3.59% nickel and 4.5m at 3.95% nickel while Seaview saw a top hit of 7m at 1.35% nickel.
“With these plus other excellent targets like Atrium and Woodbrook that have yet to be drilled, I’m confident this is only the start of mineral resource definition at the Andover Project,” he added.
Rovira also noted that the delivery of a maiden resource just 18 months after starting exploration highlighted the extraordinary potential that the company had always recognised in the Andover project.
Andover deposit
The resource at the Andover deposit is based on 104 holes drilled between 2018 and 2021 at a nominal spacing of 50m by 50m, which show good continuity of mineralisation within well-defined geological constraints.
As such, the Indicated classification generally represents areas of the primary mineralisation zone with the aforementioned drill spacing while the Inferred resource blocks are generally around the periphery and depth extent of the major mineralisation domains.
The maiden resource also vindicates Azure’s move back in July 2020 to acquire a 60% stake in the project from Mark Creasy’s Creasy Group – and is incidentally another feather in the billionaire prospector’s cap.
This article was developed in collaboration with Azure Minerals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.