Join our daily newsletter At The Bell to receive exclusive market insights
- Recent drilling at Chalice Mining’s (CHN) Julimar project in WA continues to extend the Gonneville resource, while initial results at Hartog reveal a prospective intrusive sequence
- Chalice is aiming to expand the indicated and inferred resource at the Gonneville deposit, which is on track to be delivered in June
- Exceptional intersections at the northern base of Gonneville’s resource pit-shell highlights the potential to deepen the pit-shell
- Drilling to the north is still restricted by access constraints, however, the company saw indications of an emerging mineralised system at the Hartog target
- Chalice is up 1.15 per cent with shares trading at $7.03
Drilling at Chalice Mining’s (CHN) Julimar project in WA continues to extend the Gonneville resource, while initial results at Hartog reveal a prospective intrusive sequence.
The company is continuing to explore its 30-kilometre-long Julimar Complex, with most activity currently focused on the Gonneville deposit at the southern end of the complex.
Chalice is aiming to expand the indicated and inferred resource at the deposit, which currently stands at 330 million tonnes at 0.94g/t palladium, platinum, gold (3E), 0.16 per cent nickel, 0.10 per cent copper and 0.016 per cent cobalt.
The updated resource is on track and expected to be delivered in June.
Five diamond rigs and one reverse circulation (RC) rig are currently continuing step-out, infill and metallurgical drilling at Gonneville. A combined total of 870 diamond and RC drill holes, for about 220,000 metres, and 643 air core drill holes have been completed at the project to date.
Drilling has extended the high-grade sulphide zones beyond Gonneville and importantly, sulphide mineralisation has been extended up to 400 metres below the limit of the pit shell, which shows potential for material growth into a future underground resource category.
“With each new round of drilling results, the scale, quality and potential upside of this world-class critical minerals system just keeps getting better and better. Notwithstanding the district-scale opportunity that exists along the >30-kilometre Julimar Complex to the north, these latest drill results from Gonneville have reminded us of the obvious growth potential just at Gonneville itself,” CEO and Managing Director Alex Dorsch said.
“One of the key emerging developments at Gonneville is that the high-grade extensions we are delineating at depth continue to confirm the emerging underground potential which is likely to be a key growth avenue for us into the future. Importantly everything we drill at depth continues to remain open.”
Initial early-stage exploration continues at the Hartog, Jansz and Torres targets to the north of Gonneville, however, access for exploration remains restricted across large parts of the complex due to access constraints, Chalice hopes to resolve this soon.
Chalice has managed to drill eight diamond drill holes at Hartog, which has seen several intervals of ortho-magmatic nickel-copper sulphides intersected in mafic-ultramafic rocks.
The company said this is ” a highly encouraging indication of prospectivity.”
“Our drilling to the north is still restricted by access constraints which we hope are resolved soon, however we are also very excited to see tantalising indications of an emerging mineralised system at the Hartog target, with several narrow intervals of ortho-magmatic nickel-copper sulphides observed in the right mafic-ultramafic rocks in recent drilling,” Mr Dorsch said.
“This is an exciting development and the recent results reinforce the potential of the northern targets, which we plan to drill as our exploration effort expands.”
On the market, Chalice was up 1.15 per cent with shares trading at $7.03 at 10:42 am AEST.
