BHP - Mincor Boosts Nickel Resource at Cassini by 52 Percent
A resource update from Mincor Resources’ (ASX:MCR,OTC Pink:MCRZF) Cassini nickel sulfide deposit has seen the Western Australian asset grow by 52 percent, or 9,800 tonnes of nickel.
On Tuesday (April 23), the company announced that a successful diamond drilling strategy, which took place in the March 2019 quarter, helped bring forward the 52 percent growth that pushed contained nickel to 28,500 tonnes. Cassini’s overall mineral resource now sits at 780,000 tonnes at 3.7 percent nickel, with 83 percent of the resource now in the indicated category.
“This is a tremendous result, which justifies our decision to increase the number of rigs operating with a focus on rapidly increasing the resource and testing extensions, particularly in the CS4 channel,” Mincor Managing Director David Southam said in a statement.
“Since the exceptional intersection of 7.17 metres at 11.49 percent nickel in hole MDD314 … the company has obtained five down-plunge intersections within the CS4 mineralized channel, which have allowed us to generate this mineral resource estimate update.”
Southam went on to say that drilling is set to continue at Cassini through the June 2019 quarter with at least two diamond drill rigs, with a goal of providing another resource update at the end of the quarter.
Alongside the boost to Cassini, Mincor also saw growth in the resource at its Ken mine — part of the company’s Ken McMahon Complex — which grew by 900 tonnes of nickel following recent assay results from a small drilling program. The asset’s resource now sits at 262,000 tonnes at 3.7 percent nickel for 9,600 tonnes of contained nickel.
Also highlighted by Southam was the company’s recent offtake term sheet with major miner BHP’s (ASX:BHP,NYSE:BHP) Nickel West division, which he said caused the program at Cassini to pick up speed and referred to as “game changing.”
The term sheet allows Nickel West to process anywhere between 200,000 and 600,000 tonnes of nickel ore per year through Mincor’s Kambalda nickel concentrator and its related infrastructure.
As of Tuesday, nickel was trading at US$12,480 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange.
Mincor shares dropped 1.02 percent on the ASX by the end of trading on Wednesday (April 24), closing the day at AU$0.48.
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Securities Disclosure: I, Olivia Da Silva, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.