Western Australian nickel company St George Mining Limited (ASX: SGQ) has successfully intersected the Cathedrals Belt structure with its first seismic hole at its flagship high-grade Mt Alexander Project, located in the north-eastern Goldfields.
“Our first drill hole to test a seismic target has intersected the Cathedrals Belt fault structure as modelled by the seismic data and also confirmed the presence of mafic rocks along the structure at depth,” Executive Chairman, John Prineas, said.
“These deep-reaching structures are the control on mineralisation and our increased understanding of their orientation and location will be of great help with targeting the highly prospective but underexplored deeper areas of the mineralised intrusive system.
“Confirmation by MAD206 of the ability of the seismic survey to successfully and accurately map the framework of intersecting faults is encouraging for the ongoing exploration at Mt Alexander and will make our future programmes more effective.
“Overall, we are strongly encouraged by these results and are assessing the completion of additional seismic lines over key exploration areas, including the Stricklands deposit where the seismic will assist to identify any continuation at depth of the high-grade shallow deposit.
“We have already identified two strong EM conductors outside the footprint of the Stricklands deposit that could materially increase the resource inventory, suggesting that there is more mineralisation at Stricklands that has not been detected by EM surveys to date.
“The unique geology at Mt Alexander means that there is no precedent for exploration here. But the five high-grade discoveries we have already made – including at Stricklands – drive our determination to press on to discover more nickel, copper and platinum group metals across what is a highly prospective and still underexplored project area.
“I am pleased that the metallurgical programme for Stricklands is nearing completion with a flowsheet to be provided for the potential commercial production of separate high-grade nickel and copper concentrates.
“We have already received preliminary approaches to secure the offtake from any potential mining operation at Strickland and will look at accelerating development studies with a pilot plant campaign through the XPS Mini Pilot Plant.”
A review of drill hole data is ongoing and will incorporate assay data once available as well as downhole EM (DHEM) survey data.
A DHEM survey was completed in MAD206 to 934m downhole and is interpreted to have searched a radius of at least 50m around the hole. No strong EM anomalies were observed but the data will continue to be reviewed in conjunction with assay data.
A DHEM survey is planned to complete the remaining 70m of MAD206 in the coming weeks. MAD206 was completed in a way that readily allows daughter holes to be drilled as wedges to the existing hole – so there is still an opportunity to drill in the vicinity of MAD206 to further test this area.
Target S2:
Drilling of S2 has now commenced. S2 is located in the Transits Belt structure, 1,100m north of the Cathedrals Belt. The target is located approximately 350m below surface and has a dip extent of 400m.
The reflective properties of S2 are consistent with the reflective properties of the mineralised intrusive at Investigators that was observed in Line 1 of the seismic survey.
Stricklands Starter Mine
A metallurgical testwork programme underway with XPS in Canada is nearing completion. Sequential flotation of copper and nickel has been completed with locked cycle results for precious and platinum metals still pending.
The final report by XPS will include a flowsheet for production of separate nickel and copper concentrates. A pilot plant programme to optimise the flowsheet processing in a commercial operation is being considered using the XPS Mini Pilot Plant.
The Mini Pilot Plant requires only a small sample size, circa 300kg to 400kg, enabling the use of exploration drill core rather than mining samples.
Performance of the Mini Pilot Plant has been shown to be directly related to that of a full-scale plant, allowing the Mini Pilot Plant to be used as a tool for optimisation of flowsheet design and scale-up for commercial operation.
For further information please visit: https://stgm.com.au/
