Toro ramps up exploration at key WA nickel project

Toro Energy has recommenced drilling at its Dusty nickel project after recording its thickest massive nickel sulphide intersection so far at the company’s Dimma prospect in the Yandal greenstone belt in WA.

The diamond drilling program was restarted after the company completed three holes at the prospect last week that revealed a 4.5m intercept of continuous massive nickel sulphide from 194.3m downhole.

All three drill holes at Dimma have so far intersected massive nickel sulphides indicating the discovery remains open in all directions. Toro has now discovered four nickel sulphide zones and tested less than half of the 7km strike of its host Dusty komatiite rock unit. The Dimma prospect is the most southern of the four major discoveries at the project that include Jumping Jack, Houli Dooley and the original Dusty target.

All four discoveries are in the same geological setting at the base of the Dusty Komatiite which magnetic geophysics suggests stretches some 7.5km. The deposits remain open up dip towards the surface and at depth and three remain untested along strike. Due to difficult drilling conditions as yet only the discovery hole has been successfully completed at Houli Dooley.

Last year follow-up drilling at the Dimma deposit hit massive and semi-massive nickel sulphides. The company says spot analysis by portable X-ray fluorescence suggests a nickel sulphide range of between 1 per cent and 3.1 per cent nickel.

The company believes the nickel bearing zones have substantial copper, cobalt, platinum and palladium credits at the first three discoveries and analysis will be needed to confirm this at Dimma.

Some of the best results from other discoveries include Dusty nailing 9m at 2.07 per cent nickel. Houli Dooley has only had one drill hole and it returned 3.05m grading 1.59 per cent nickel. Two holes at Jumping Jack returned up to 3.4m of nickel bearing semi-massive and massive sulphide with p-XRF results up to 4.66 per cent nickel.

Toro’s nickel discoveries sit approximately 50km east of BHP’s world class Mount Keith nickel deposit which had an original resource of 647 million tonnes at 0.52 per cent nickel. Mount Keith is a bulk tonnage nickel mine with remaining resources of 224 million tonnes going 0.53 per cent nickel.

Whilst nickel is predominantly used in the construction of stainless steel, the commodity is tipped to have a bright future in the green energy space because of its ongoing use in the production of two of the most commonly used battery chemistries: nickel-cobalt-aluminium and nickel-manganese-cobalt. At present about 7 per cent of nickel finds its way into batteries but the figure is tipped to grow to about 40 per cent by 2040.

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