Impact Minerals has doubled down on its ground position in the emerging Southwest nickel province of Western Australia with the company applying for an additional 1,050 square kilometres of ground surrounding its already extensive Arkun Nickel-Copper-PGE project southeast of Perth. Arkun now covers over 1,900 square kilometres of ground with the company looking to hunt down a look-alike of Chalice’s spectacular Julimar Nickel-PGE discovery to the northwest.
Impact’s pegging in the region comes of the back of a number of nickel discoveries in the under-explored Southwest mineral field in recent years. The Quicksilver nickel discovery, south of the wheatbelt town of Hyden, initially put a spotlight on the region back in 2017 however the recent Julimar Nickel-PGE discovery, made in March of this year, has cemented the terrane as an emerging nickel province.
Julimar is located a mere 70 km northeast of Perth and is associated with intrusive ultramafic rocks similar in nature to those that host the high-profile Nova-Bollinger nickel discovery in Fraser Range of southern WA. Drill intercepts from Julimar in recent weeks have been mind-blowing, including an impressive 75.1 metres at 1.7% Nickel, 0.7% Copper, 6.2 g/t Palladium and 1.7 g/t Platinum from JD002.
In the hunt for the next Julimar, Impact’s well credentialled team is led by ex-WMC geologist and veteran nickel explorer Dr Mike Jones.
Impact’s team has established that Julimar lies at the north western end of a much larger regional scale ‘mobile belt’ that extends for over 500 km to the southeast from the discovery and is up to 30 km wide. The company has now set about targeting key geophysical anomalies and making applications over these prospects, resulting in the birth of the Arkun project in May.
Impact Minerals Managing Director, Dr Michael Jones, said: “We now have an exploration project that has excellent underlying fundamentals for the discovery of a major nickel-copper-PGE deposit as well as for the discovery of gold. “
“The area has never been properly explored despite the fact there are regional surface geochemistry anomalies and the area appears to lie on a major regional structure that for the most part has been ignored in the geological studies in the state.”
Despite a lack of systematic exploration, Impact has managed to secure regional datasets that are already beginning to reveal the incredible potential of the region. Magnetic and gravity datasets highlight a number of ‘Nova Eye-Style’ nickel targets whilst regional work by WA Government agencies has returned anomalous nickel, copper and gold in wide spaced surface sampling, adding further weight to the company’s theories.
However, in recent weeks, the greatest endorsement of Impact’s strategy in the region has been the entry of one of the world’s leading mining companies, Anglo American PLC, into the region. Anglo American has applied for a whopping 10,130 square kilometres between York and Corrigin in WA’s Wheatbelt surrounding Impact on three sides.
Impact plans to begin its hunt for the next in the coming weeks, with its field team to conduct first-pass sampling on its new acquisition soon.
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