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Impact secures NSW drilling grant for Broken Hill
Mining
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Special Report: The technical merit of Impact’s proposed Broken Hill drilling program has been recognised with a $75,000 grant from the New South Wales government.
The grant from the New Frontiers Cooperative Drilling program will be used to help fund drilling that will test specific targets along the 6km Rockwell-Little Broken Hill Gabbro trend that is prospective for nickel, copper and palladium group metals (PGM).
Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT) says the entire trend is very poorly explored with only a few drill holes completed by previous explorers to shallow depths.
As part of its preparations for the drill program, the company recently completed field checking and extensive rock chip sampling with results expected in May.
In-house research has shown that the Rockwell-Little Broken Hill Gabbro trend forms part of a 40km long belt that hosts similar intrusions where Impact and other companies have discovered some of the highest grades of all six PGMs in Australia along with exceptional nickel-copper grades.
Drilling at the company’s Red Hill prospect, which was announced in October 2015, returned a 1.2m intercept grading 254 grams per tonne (g/t) palladium, 10.4g/t platinum, 10.9g/t gold, 7.4 per cent nickel, 1.8 per cent copper, 19g/t silver, 0.5 per cent cobalt, 4.6g/t rhodium, 7.2g/t iridium, 5.6g/t osmium and 3.1g/t ruthenium.
“We are very pleased to have received this $75,000 grant for drilling at Broken Hill. It is a testament to the in-house research we have completed there over the past few years on the potential of the region to host high-grade nickel copper-PGM mineralisation,” managing director Mike Jones said.
“The recent discoveries of similar mineralisation in magmatic massive sulphides by both Chalice Gold Mines Limited at Julimar near Perth and Legend Mining Limited near Nova-Bollinger in the Fraser Range show that there is considerable interest in this style of mineralisation.
“In addition, the recent exceptional drill results of Alkane Resources Limited from the Boda discovery along trend from our Commonwealth project continue to demonstrate the tremendous upside for porphyry copper-gold mineralisation in the region.”
READ: Impact teams-up with Castillo, Squadron to drive Broken Hill exploration
At the Commonwealth project in the Lachlan Fold Belt, the company has received assays from rock chip samples on four key targets along trend from and close to Alkane Resources’ (ASX:ALK) Boda-Kaiser porphyry copper-gold discovery.
In addition to the Boda South, Apsley, Spicers Creek and Greenobbys targets, Impact has also identified the Gladstone target that is along trend to the south of Magmatic Resources’ (ASX:MAG) Lady Ilse target.
All five targets have characteristics suggesting that they are parts of a large porphyry or other large intrusive-related copper-gold systems.
Follow-up exploration programs comprising soil geochemistry and ground geophysics to define drill targets will be prioritised on final interpretation of the rock chip assays.
READ: Explainer: Why are so many explorers chasing a porphyry payday?
Impact added that it planned to progress its field programs within the restrictions imposed by the government to restrict the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
It noted that a considerable amount of data was being compiled in preparation for the resumption of field activities.
