Corazon ready to bring the nickel boom back to life after completing Miriam buy

Corazon Mining is ready to revive a long forgotten WA nickel deposit after completing a deal to secure total ownership of the Miriam project near Coolgardie.

Miriam was discovered by Anaconda Nickel back in 1969, when drilling undertaken by the company in the 60s and 70s hit ‘high nickel tenor’ massive and disseminated sulphides.

Corazon (ASX:CZN) has already highlighted extensions to areas of known mineralisation as its initial priority exploration focus.

Work by Anaconda defined the core of the Miriam deposit to a strike and depth of 150m, with some drilling extended to 300m below surface.

While this cannot be used to outline a JORC 2012 resource, it provides a great platform for Corazon to unleash modern exploration techniques on the project, which is located just 10km south-south west of the legendary mining town of Coolgardie.

It is also along the same ultramafic trend as the Nepean nickel mine, a historic high grade nickel sulphide producer now in the portfolio of Auroch Minerals.

Corazon says it plans to rollout modern, high-powered geophysics to test areas of known mineralisation for follow up drilling.

The timing of the deal is sensational, with nickel trading for almost US$34,000/t on the LME, up from less than US$20,000/t in December last year.

Plenty to find

Corazon is not the first explorer to take on Miriam since Anaconda left the scene.

Crest Resources, and a JV between Berkeley Resources, MPI and Sipa Exploration in the 1990s and 2000s respectively identified massive and disseminated nickel sulphides within or close to well-defined channel sequences.

The existence of the target trend will help Corazon take focused exploration with higher powered EM, building off the last geophysical testwork almost 20 years ago which successfully identified mineralization at Miriam.

Many of the holes drilled historically at the project tested the ultramafic sequence north and south of Miriam, but largely consisted of shallow percussion that didn’t hit the ultramafic footwall target.

For that reason Corazon believes there is extensive untested opportunity to target nickel both below and along strike previous drilling.

Miriam revival to add to high quality portfolio

Corazon, which recently raised a company record $7.6 million from investors to bankroll exploration at its Lynn Lake mining centre, is no stranger to historic mine sites.

At its flagship Lynn Lake in Manitoba, Corazon is aiming to revive one of Canada’s biggest historic nickel producers, which last delivered nickel sulphide in 1976.

It also owns the Mt Gilmore cobalt-copper-gold project in New South Wales.

Having elected to exercise the Miriam option for $125,000 in its stage 1 consideration, Corazon completed the deal by paying the vendor Limelight Industries Pty Ltd $400,000.

That will give Corazon 100% ownership of the project, which comprises five prospecting license applications over a 6km by 1.5km area, and full management of the site once the tenements are granted.

The vendor will retain a net smelter royalty of 2% and the right to mine mullock dumps on the leases for gold and metal detect on the area for the first three years after the grant.

This article was developed in collaboration with Corazon Mining, 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.