Podium Minerals has kicked off on a resource drilling program at its Parks Reef platinum group metals deposit near Cue. The company aims to link up and fill in the gaps in the Parks Reef resource where there is little to no existing drilling and extend the total modelled resources over a combined length of 8.5 kilometres. Podium’s current resource at Parks Reef stands at 1.14 million ounces of combined platinum, palladium plus gold and 37,300 tonnes of copper.
Three previously defined resource blocks make up the total resource across Parks Reef - the west, central and east blocks that extend along a combined total length of 6.9km.
The west resource block is bounded by significant platinum, palladium plus gold, or “PGM” intercepts and appears to leave the deposit wide open to potential extensions.
Management said the westernmost drill line contains three remarkable drill hits including 19 metres grading 2.05 grams per tonne PGM from just 5m down hole and 20m grading 1.56g/t PGM from 77m.
Podium’s planned drilling comprises about 1,600m of RC and aims to join the west and central resource blocks into one continuous, 6.1km zone. The company also said a single hole in the centre of this target area returned 18m grading 1.8g/t PGM from only 12m depth.
Perth-based Podium said the prospective Parks Reef geological horizon stretches over a 15km strike and the shallow PGM and base metal mineralisation is open in both directions and at depth right along the impressive span.
The Parks Reef deposit sits within a granted mining lease located between Meekatharra and Cue in the Mid-West region of WA.
Podium is also planning geological mapping and rock chip sampling campaign to start this month which it will look to use to create even more drill targets.
A 1.2km-long potential extension of the main Parks Reef deposit has been identified from an aeromagnetic image and appears to be offset around a kilometre south by a fault. Podium’s ground-based greenfield program is targeting this potentially lucrative horizon.
The company should see some interesting news flow over the coming weeks as drilling results roll in – the palladium price jumping four-fold over the last five years shouldn’t hurt either.
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