Successful re-assays of historical drill cores has lent credence to Lunnon Metals’ belief that holes drilled by WMC Resources will support resource growth at the Foster nickel mine.

The work on the historical drill core program targeting the N75C nickel surface at the mine, which is part of the Kambalda Nickel Project in Western Australia, confirmed the thick, mineralised trend noted on WMC’s plans and returned a top result of 15.75m grading 2.76% nickel in hole CD54.

Notably, the broader re-assay program showed a highly encouraging 97.6% correlation between Lunnon Metals’ (ASX:LM8) new results and the original WMC assays.

Its diamond drilling of the interpreted N75C surface just 20m south of CD54 confirmed that the area is unmined.

“We have again confirmed the robustness of the historical WMC data which gives us great confidence that our historical drill core program can contribute to the growth of the Mineral Resource at Foster,” managing director Ed Ainscough said.

“We are now well placed to complete the first output from this program by year end and report to the market in 2022.”

Foster Nickel Mine

The historical drill core program is designed to use this old data to define a JORC 2012 resource for the areas left unmined when the Foster Nickel Mine closed in 1994 after producing 61,000t of nickel.

It also highlights areas for future exploration drilling.

The N75C surface was selected as a high priority target for this work due to historical records indicating the presence of a so-called “thick” mineralised trend on the WMC long projection when the mine closed and its proximity to the company’s existing resource at the 85H surface.

The 85H surface has a resource of 687,000t grading 2.4% nickel for 16,600t of contained nickel.

Lunnon adds that the re-assay program also offers the potential for resource growth independent of the success of its parallel exploration program and highlights the prospectivity of the main Foster nickel surfaces for future underground exploration.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Lunnon Metals, 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.