Reconnaissance diamond drilling at Chalice Mining’s Gonneville resource has identified platinum group element (PGE) sulphide mineralisation.
The Gonneville Resource is located at Chalice’s 100 per cent owned Julimar project in WA.
Drilling has continued to intersect mineralised rock types from wide-spaced sites, demonstrating the considerable size of the Julimar mineral system and the possibility of localised high-grade zones.
Drilling yielded significant results of platinum, palladium and gold, collectively called 3E, which is one of six PGEs.
Several multi-kilometre sections of the Julimar project remain untested, and planning is underway for additional exploration drilling. This program is expected to commence later this year.
Julimar expands on Chalice’s already enormous nickel-copper-platinum deposit at Gonneville.
Located approximately 70km north-east of Perth, the Gonneville deposit was first discovered in March 2020, at the time becoming the largest sulphide discovery in more than twenty years, and the largest PGE discovery in Australian history.
And in March this year, Chalice revealed a significant resource upgrade to the Gonneville deposit.
Gonneville now boasts an open-pit and underground mineral resource of 560 million tonnes (Mt) at 0.88 grams per tonne (g/t) 3E, 0.16 per cent nickel, 0.09 per cent copper and 0.015 per cent cobalt.
This amounts to 16 million ounces (Moz) of 3E, 860,000 tonnes of nickel, 520,000 tonnes copper and 83,000 tonnes of cobalt, and approximately 3Mt of nickel equivalent (NiEq) product.
“The approximately 50 per cent increase in the Gonneville resource to 3 million tonnes of nickel equivalent is quite a remarkable achievement for the Chalice team given it is barely three years since the discovery of the Julimar complex,” Chalice chief executive officer Alex Dorsch said.
“The latest numbers continue to demonstrate the world-class endowment, scale and quality of the Gonneville deposit…”