Horizon Minerals notches up more WA nickel hits

Final single-metre drill assays from Horizon Minerals’ recent foray with the drill bit at its Cannon project near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia have notched up several encouraging nickel hits at the Euston prospect including 2m at 2.21 per cent nickel, 765 parts per million copper, 324ppm cobalt and 0.76 grams per tonne combined platinum-palladium from 161m.

Other notable hits from Euston includes 4m returning an encouraging 0.64 per cent nickel and 321ppm copper from 180m.

A further 900m up the track, at the Blair North prospect, the drill bit latched onto 2m going 2.68 per cent nickel, 0.9 per cent copper, 440 ppm cobalt and 0.71g/t combined platinum-palladium from 176m.

Horizon punched five holes for 990m into the project’s Euston and Blair North prospects to test new geophysical targets and validate historical nickel results.

The project’s prospective mineralised komatiites were discovered in 2008 by previous operator Southern Gold Ltd in its quest to outline the nearby Cannon gold deposit. Drilling at the time coughed up 3m at 2.26 per cent nickel from 156m along with an additional 2m going 3.94 per cent nickel from 161m from the same hole at Blair North and 4m at 1.78 per cent nickel at Euston.

Encouragingly, the company says the latest results confirm historical results and indicate the nickel-copper-platinum-pallidium metallurgy is comparable with other world-class Kambalda-style komatiite hosted nickel deposits in the region.

The company is planning a further 1000m of follow-up drilling at the Cannon prospects later this year.

Further afield, at the company’s Golden Ridge project, Horizon completed seven RC holes for 1530m in its regional pursuit to etch out fertile ultramafic horizons prospective for nickel mineralisation. Leaving no stone unturned, the company also used the probe to gauge the potential for volcanic massive sulphide hosted copper-zinc-lead mineralisation in adjacent felsic volcanic rocks.

Whilst no fresh nickel sulphides were intersected, down hole electromagnetic – or ‘DHEM’ surveys completed on three of the holes picked up several conductors. DHEM surveys are a common exploration tool used to help identify potentially mineralised massive sulphide conductors located nearby.

It’s very encouraging to see confirmation of nickel sulphide mineralisation at Blair North and Euston and we look forward to further drilling success in this highly prospective area. The results for the downhole EM survey and geoscientific analysis at Golden Ridge has also demonstrated the potential of the area to host significant new nickel sulphide mineralisation.

At the Yarmany project, air-core drilling completed by the company last year perforated a layer of nickel-rich laterites. Horizon says three RC drill holes were designed to target the likely ultramafic source.

Analysis of the drill results confirms the company has perforated a fertile magnesium-rich komatiite prospective for Kambalda-style nickel mineralisation.

Complementing its regional nickel hunt, Horizon also completed a 972 hole auger drilling program at Yarmany to obtain samples for multi-element Ultrafine analysis.

The company believes the Yarmany tenure is prospective for a gamut of metals including gold, nickel and lithium along with some more obscure rare earths. A recent literature review conducted by Horizon noted the Yarmany-Ida fault area had ‘unusually high levels of REE enrichment’ relating to the presence of rare-earth phosphates xenotime and monazite.

The Perth-based producer has its foot on over 1100 square kilometres of prime WA real estate that collectively house a 1.15 million-ounce gold resource along with a raft of nickel-cobalt, copper, silver-zinc and platinum-group targets.

The company has a busy time ahead having committed to 65,000m of drilling this financial year to bolster the already solid gold resource figures and could possibly throw in a new discovery of some in-vogue metals into the mix.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au