Blackstone’s Ta Khoa nickel sulphide discovery just keeps growing

Special Report: Blackstone Minerals’ maiden drilling at its Ban Chang sulphide nickel-copper prospect within its Ta Khoa project in Vietnam continues to yield impressive results.

High-grade massive sulphide nickel over a 1.2km strike has now been intersected by Blackstone Minerals (ASX:BSX) within the target zone at its Ban Chang prospect.

Positive results from several drill holes have enabled the company to extend its sulphide target zone to more than 2km along strike at Ta Khoa and identify further priority electromagnetic plates throughout its Viper Discovery Zone.

One drill hole hit 9.6m at 0.84 per cent nickel, 0.73 per cent copper, 0.5 per cent cobalt and 0.7 per cent platinum group metals from 57m.

“Drilling continues to deliver consistent, broad intersections of nickel sulphide mineralisation from shallow depths with average widths of ~10m throughout most of the Ban Chang prospect and broader zones within Ban Chang East, with greater than 20m-wide intersections of potentially bulk-mineable grade nickel-copper-platinum group elements (PGE) mineralisation,” managing director Scott Williamson said.

The Ban Chang prospect is 2.5km southeast of the Ban Phuc deposit and processing facility.

The known mineralisation style at Ban Chang is mainly veins and lenses of massive sulphide as well as disseminated sulphide hosted within tremolite dykes and are interpreted to be hosted within subsidiary structures off the major regional Chim Van-Co Muong fault system.

The prospect was historically mapped by Vietnamese geologists in the 1960s.

Drilling adds to Viper Discovery Zone targets

The drilling results follow Blackstone’s recent discovery of massive sulphide nickel targets at the Viper Discovery Zone at Ban Chang which has been followed up by its geology team.

Previously announced drilling results included 9.8m at 1.45 per cent nickel, 0.9 per cent copper, 0.08 per cent cobalt and 0.7 grams per tonne PGE from 57.05m.

The Viper Discovery Zone has a series of new, shallow electromagnetic anomalies around 200m northeast of Ban Chang East.

Blackstone has six drill rigs in operation at Ta Khoa, of which three are testing massive sulphide vein targets at Ban Chang, and three are testing down dip extensions of the King Cobra discovery at Ban Phuc.

“We aim to drill out Ban Chang over the coming months and upgrade our resource inventory by the end of 2020,” Williamson said.

A scoping study for a downstream processing facility to produce nickel sulphate for the lithium-ion battery industry, and a maiden resource for Ban Phuc is on track for completion by October.