REZ unearths a treasure trove of battery metals at Menzies

Drilling at REZ’s Springfield prospect keeps throwing up nice surprises, this time uncovering a bunch of high value battery metals. A potentially lucrative find considering the company had been initially on the hunt for gold.

Not long after Resources & Energy Group (ASX:REZ) found nickel while drilling for gold at its Menzies project in Western Australia, the company has now unearthed an array of other highly sought after battery metals, including copper, cobalt, platinum and palladium.

REZ sent several sample intervals recovered from the Springfield drilling program for multi-element assaying and got back some very interesting results.

While a new peak assay of 1m at 1.78% nickel from 98m was returned, re-assaying also showed significant intervals of mineralisation that included nickel, cobalt, chromium, molybdenum, zinc, platinum and palladium in the four holes drilled so far.

The news saw REZ shares close up nearly 14% on Tuesday at 4.9c.

Resources & Energy Group (ASX:REZ) share price chart

A gold hunt turns up nickel

REZ’s earlier investigations at the Springfield and Cepline prospects, part of the Menzies project, uncovered peak assays from historic drilling of 12m at 1.22% nickel from 2m, 9m at 1.08% nickel from 1m and 7m at 1.46% nickel from 16m.

These intercepts, which were the result of aircore drilling by Pronto Resources in 2008 and rotary air blast drilling by Great Australian Resources (GAR) in 2004, also contained cobalt and zinc mineralisation.

After the Richard Poole-led company initially discovered nickel, it did some digging and came across old CRA (now Rio Tinto) and BHP reports which showed the two mining heavyweights had found nickel as far back as the late 60s but weren’t interested in it because they only wanted gold.

BHP back in 1986 reported significantly high values of nickel, with a peak grade of 2.9%, and as close to surface as just 6m.

This was at the Cepline prospect in the Springfield Venn zone, some 800m north of the REZ’s recent scout drilling program.

Nearly 20 years earlier, CRA reported surface rock samples grading 0.95% to 1.43%, and drill results of 10ft at 1.49% from 55ft and 15ft at 0.77% from 170ft.

Over five decades later, nickel is all the rage thanks to the energy transition and the base metal’s importance in batteries. But it’s not just nickel, with copper, cobalt, platinum and palladium all playing their part in the clean energy shift.

Nickel holy grail

The additional results support the view that the ultramafic rocks along the Springfield side of the East Menzies project are prospective for nickel sulphides.

Nickel resources are usually divided between laterite or sulphide deposits.

Sulphides are the holy grail for explorers because they are easier and cheaper to process. This is also what makes nickel sulphides the preferred choice of electric vehicle battery makers.

Sydney-based REZ is undertaking further research towards developing a suitable exploration program to investigate the mineral bearing potential of the area.

This article was developed in collaboration with Resources & Energy Group, 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.