eMetals Exploration Manager: Poona Project Demonstrates “Real Chance” of Nickel Sulphides
“The cobalt and copper (soil samples) were saying there’s a real chance of nickel sulphides here,” says eMetals Limited exploration manager Roland Gotthard.
In a recent interview with the Investing News Network (INN), eMetals (ASX:EMT) Exploration Manager Roland Gotthard discussed the company’s exploration results from the Poona rare metals project, which strongly indicate nickel sulphide mineralisation supported by highly anomalous and highly significant platinum-group elements (PGEs) assays.
The project, which is located 70 kilometres northwest of Cue in the Murchison Domain of the Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia, is also prospective for lithium-caesium-tantalum pegmatite mineralisation.
eMetals Exploration Manager Roland Gotthard said the company started out in the lithium space in Poona, where soil samples indicated there was nickel, copper and cobalt. The level of nickel — 0.15 percent — was quite high.
“The cobalt and copper (soil samples) were saying there’s a real chance of nickel sulphides here,” he said. “The key is that the sulphide is much easier to get out of the rock.”
Gotthard explained that the company ran these samples for PGEs, which is a sensitive indicator of the presence of sulphides. The PGE results included the presence of elevated platinum (up to 54 ppb) and palladium (up to 23 ppb) in soil samples, which is consistent with the elevated nickel, copper and cobalt sourced from PGE-enriched magmatic sulphides.
“To put that into context, some of the more well-known nickel prospects in Western Australia at the moment (have) similar levels of PGE and known sulphide,” he said. “So the indications that they’re sulphides within the fresh rock (means) we have to now complete the soil program that’s going on at the moment and get the results back.”
Gotthard added that once those results do come back, the company will be looking at doing some electromagnetic geophysics to define bedrock conductor and then begin drilling sometime in the new year.
When it comes to putting drilling in motion, Gotthard said the company has to get permission from local stakeholders to be able to proceed, which he said can be an expensive and long process.
“We want to do that right so that we’ve got the stakeholder engagement going forward,” he told INN, which includes hospitals and Indigenous people.
Gotthard explained that the first stage is to define the geochemical footprint and then use the geophysics to investigate the drill targets. The company is currently looking at a 9 kilometre strike length of prospective rocks, and somewhere within that stretch — where most nickel deposits are only 200 or 300 metres long — eMetals will need to identify anywhere between a 200 and 500 zone to put the drill holes into it.
While the drill targets are solely focused on nickel, Gotthard said that there are plenty of other opportunities on the project, including lithium, cesium and tantalum. He said that eMetals also has other tenements in the area for an additional 700 square kilometres of ground that the company has an application for, and which Gotthard said will be explored next year.
For more on what Gotthard had to say about the Poona rare metals project and the company’s additional projects, watch the video above.
This interview is sponsored by eMetals (ASX:EMT). This interview provides information that was sourced by the Investing News Network (INN) and approved by eMetals in order to help investors learn more about the company. eMetals is a client of INN. The company’s campaign fees pay for INN to create and update this interview.
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