Nordic Nickel is ready to rumble after raising $12m through an oversubscribed initial public offering to advance exploration of its two projects in Finland.
The Pulju and Maaninkijoki 3 projects are located in the Central Lapland Greenstone Belt, which is significantly underexplored despite hosting top tier projects such as the 7.4Moz Kittilä gold mine, the 307Mt Kevitsa nickel-copper-gold open pit mine and the 44Mt Sakatti copper-nickel-PGE underground development project.
With Nordic Nickel’s (ASX:NNL) IPO of 115.2 million shares priced at 25c closing oversubscribed by a very juicy $4m, the company is well funded to use modern exploration techniques to explore high-potential targets.
The company will also seek to deliver a maiden JORC resource in the near term based on the extensive shallow mineralisation drilled historically at the Pulju project.
Demand high for nickel
“Our vision is to discover and develop traceable, sustainably sourced, low-carbon, high-purity class-1 nickel sulphides in Finland, at a time when demand for battery metals is
growing exponentially,” managing director Todd Ross says.
“Thanks to the backing of Starboard Global, we have been able to assemble a unique suite of assets including a district-scale landholding in one of the world’s premier nickel sulphide provinces, the Central Lapland Greenstone Belt.”
He added that the region is significantly under-explored for komatiite/intrusive hosted nickel deposits using modern exploration techniques – unlike more mature belts like Kambalda in Western Australia.
“The CLGB offers a generational opportunity for nickel exploration and the advanced exploration already conducted within the Pulju project area allows Nordic to expand known mineralisation and drill outstanding deeper geophysical targets that could deliver company-changing discoveries,” Ross explained.
“Battery metals are critical for decarbonisation and the global energy transition, however it is vital to ensure that the upstream exploration, development, and production of these metals is conducted in a responsible and sustainable manner.
“Finland is a fantastic location to be doing this, not only because of its geological prospectivity but also because it has a robust legal and permitting regime, high environmental standards, a commitment to best- practice ESG and is incentivising nickel sulphide projects through a National Battery Strategy.”
Target rich environment
Pulju is a 395km2 exploration project comprising exploration licence applications and a granted exploration licence within a larger granted exploration reservation, within which the company has an exclusive two-year right to submit exploration licence applications, that covers a large area of the greenstone belt.
Based on historical drilling, this area contains widespread nickel sulphide mineralisation that includes a number of high nickel tenor massive sulphide veins within a district-scale land package which contains mafic-ultramafic lithologies analogous to Finland’s world-class Sakatti deposit.
This includes 51 holes drilled by Outokumpu in the 1980s and 1990s that have been verified by modern sampling and re-assays from the remaining core and is set to underpin an initial JORC Mineral Resource Estimate, which Nordic expects to deliver in the months after listing.
Maiden drilling at Pulju will target the potential for world-class discoveries at depth similar to the Sakatti deposit.
Nordic will also carry out down-hole electromagnetic work, which was successfully used to track massive sulphides at Sakatti, on the open holes during the third quarter of 2022.
Initial DHEM undertaken at Pulju has identified a number of near-surface targets, including a high-response off-hole conductor coincident with a high nickel grade massive sulphide vein at 155m depth.
Subsequent Fixed-loop EM (FLEM) not only confirmed the initial DHEM targets, but it has also identified large deeper-seated conductors that will be priority targets for drilling once Nordic commences its maiden exploration field season.
This article was developed in collaboration with Nordic Nickel, 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.