Poseidon Nickel has made a promising greenfields nickel find at its Lake Johnston project, where it may have unearthed a mineralised, open-ended channel at the Maggie Hays West prospect.

Poseidon Nickel (ASX:POS) has confirmed several areas of coincident nickel and copper anomalism during a reconnaissance drilling program at the Lake Johnston project in Western Australia.

The most notable results featured 28m at 0.66% nickel and 187 parts per million (ppm) copper from 20m, including 4m at 1.32% nickel and 134ppm copper from 40m, 8m at 1.18% nickel and 143ppm copper from 40m and 24m at 0.88% nickel and 220ppm copper from 12m, including 12m at 1.16% nickel and 256ppm copper from 20m.

These intersections indicate a coherent highly anomalous nickel-copper regolith trend over 300m, which is located up dip from isolated historic nickel sulphide intersections of 1.7m at 1.59% nickel and 810ppm copper and 2.55m at 1.92% nickel and 1,344ppm copper.

“The initial results from the drilling program are extremely positive for a reconnaissance program and confirmed several areas of coincident nickel copper anomalism at several prospects along the Western Ultramafic Unit basal contact,” managing director Peter Harold said.

“The results indicate the possibility of a mineralised, open ended channel target at Maggie Hays West that is up to 400m wide and corresponds to a discrete magnetic feature.

“This interpretation presents a compelling high priority target that warrants further drilling. The Western Ultramafic Unit opens up new opportunities for further discoveries and is an exciting development for Lake Johnston.”

Poseidon also identified two new prospects, Windy Hill and Jaymee Ruth, which returned nickel and copper values alongside the Western Ultramafic Unit.

Top hits at Windy Hill included 12m at 0.46% nickel and 329ppm copper from 8m and 4m at 0.48% nickel and 812ppm copper from 24m, while Jaymee Ruth delivered a notable intercept of 5m at 0.51% nickel and 255ppm copper from just 5m.

While Poseidon is moving towards a final investment decision on the restart of the Black Swan mine, the emerging producer views Lake Johnston as potentially its next nickel sulphide operation.

An engineering scoping study completed on Lake Johnston in early 2022 demonstrated the processing plant could be refurbished at a fraction of the time and cost it would take to build a new 1.5-million-tonne-per-annum plant and associated infrastructure.

Poseidon’s plan is to first grow Lake Johnston’s resource and reserve base to support a potential restart.

By developing a second processing hub, the company could meet its strategic target of at least 15,000 tonnes per annum of nickel in concentrate production.

The history of Lake Johnston

The Lake Johnston plant started operating in 1998 with the original concentrator treating ore from the Emily Ann underground nickel mine.

All up 1.5 million tonnes of ore was mined from Emily Ann and processed at an average grade of 3.8% nickel, which resulted in the production of 57,000 tonnes of contained nickel between 1998 and 2007.

There have been several plant expansions since the project commenced operation, with the most recent being a major hike in throughput capacity to 1.5 million tonnes per annum in 2006 to treat ore from the lower grade Maggie Hays underground mine.

The Maggie Hays deposit was brought online in 2007 with a resource of 12.3 million tonnes at 1.5% nickel for 182,000 tonnes of contained nickel and operated between 2008 and 2013.

The plant was refurbished in 2011 before being placed on care and maintenance in 2013 due to the low nickel price.

 

 

 

This article was developed in collaboration with Poseidon 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.

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