What's happened?
Blackstone announced today that their in-house geophysics crew has generated a new high priority Ni-Cu-PGE target at the King Snake prospect.
What are the key highlights?
- King Snake is located 1.5km north-east of the processing facility and the flagship Ban Phuc Disseminated Sufide (DSS) deposit where the company has delivered the King Cobra discovery and recently announced the maiden Indicated Mineral Resource of 44.3Mt @ 0.52% Ni for 229kt Ni and Inferred Mineral Resource of 14.3Mt @ 0.35% Ni for 50kt Ni (Refer to ASX announcement from 14 October 2020);
- The King Snake prospect is analogous to the Ban Phuc Massive Sulfide Vein (MSV) orebody where previous owners successfully mined 975kt of high grade ore at average grades of 2.4% Ni & 1.0% Cu from an average vein width of 1.3m for 3.5 years between 2013 and 2016, producing 20.7kt Ni, 10.1kt Cu and 0.67kt Co;
- Drilling at King Snake by previous owners was not targeting electromagnetic (EM) plates and Blackstone’s geophysics crew will now use EM to refine the targets at King Snake for high impact drilling over the coming months;
- Historic drill holes from King Snake returned the following significant results (see Figures 2 & 3 and Tables 1 & 2 in announcement): BP00-01 3.04m @ 2.03% Ni, 0.69% Cu, 0.07% Co & 1.45g/t PGE 1 from 89.9m incl. 1.74m @ 3.30% Ni, 1.02% Cu, 0.11% Co & 2.16g/t PGE from 90.2m BPN07-01 BP05-03 BP00-11 1.33m @ 1.42% Ni, 0.69% Cu, 0.06% Co & 2.54g/t PGE from 26.0m 0.60m @ 2.18% Ni, 1.01% Cu, 0.09% Co & 3.76g/t PGE from 137.5m 0.80m @ 1.30% Ni, 0.78% Cu, 0.06% Co & 0.93g/t PGE from 57.2m 1 Platinum (Pt) + Palladium (Pd) + Gold (Au)
- A recently purchased ninth drill rig will continue to follow the geophysics crew throughout the Ta Khoa nickel sulfide district, testing high priority EM targets generated from 25 MSV prospects including Ban Chang, Ta Cuong, Ban Khoa and King Snake;
- Drilling continues at the King Cobra Discovery zone (KCZ), Ban Chang, Ta Cuong and Ban Khoa;
- Blackstone’s recently announced Scoping Study highlighted an economically robust nickel sulfide project to produce downstream Nickel:Cobalt:Manganese (NCM) Precursor products for the Lithium-ion battery industry;
- Blackstone’s Scoping Study recently announced annual production of ~12.7ktpa Ni over 8.5 years project life generating a Pre‐tax NPV8% of ~US$665m and 45% IRR with a capital payback period of 2.5 years at US$8/lb Ni;
