ASX-listed Todd River Resources looks on track to extend its growing list of nickel, copper and platinum group element or “PGE” targets in Western Australia’s South West mineral field with the company kick starting an 8,000 metre aircore and RC drilling program along the eastern trend of gabbroic and ultramafic intrusions in the Berkshire Valley. The program is aimed at following up on previously discovered anomalies and is expected to be wrapped up by Christmas.
Following the drilling program, the company plans to complete a moving loop electromagnetic survey aimed at identifying conductors at depth over the eastern trend prior to running seismic across a new northern target area, where a large, previously found magnetic feature will be surveyed.
Todd River’s Berkshire Valley tenure is in Chalice Mining territory around 100 kms to the north of Chalice’s revered platinum-nickel-copper discovery known as Gonneville.
Gonneville, which is part of Chalice’s Julimar project, boasts a whopping in ground resources of 330 million tonnes grading 0.58 per cent nickel equivalent and 1.6 g/t palladium equivalent.
Chalice’s share price skyrocketed from less than $0.20 prior to the discovery of Gonneville to an intraday high of more than $10.07 this week.
Previous work by Todd River at its Berkshire Valley landholdings unveiled a pair of trends hosting nickel-copper-PGE mineralisation.
Its initial work over the Berkshire tenure focused on a 40km long Western mafic-ultramafic trend where historical exploration exhumed highly anomalous nickel, copper and gold mineralisation. Recent work has been focused on the unexplored Eastern Trend, with shallow auger drilling there unveiling a 20km long trend laden with platinum, palladium, copper and nickel hits. The anomalism is thought to be associated with a suite of intrusive ultramafic rocks that the company says are akin to those of the Julimar discovery.
Todd River Resources, Managing Director Will Dix said:“This is an exciting time for the company; we are well funded to carry out our exploration activities and look forward to sharing the results with shareholders as soon as they are received.”
Elsewhere, Todd River recently unveiled a trio of anomalous PGE hits courtesy of a five-hole reverse circulation campaign at its promising Nanutarra nickel, copper and PGE project in the Gascoyne region of WA. According to the company, one of the five holes intersected a strong PGE anomalism that could be associated with elevated nickel and copper.
The best result from the Nanutarra campaign was a two-metre hit going 0.3 per cent nickel with 0.1 per cent copper and 301 parts per billion platinum and palladium from 77m.
Any decent PGE-nickel-copper hits by Todd River at Berkshire Valley could see it snare some of the Julimar limelight – and there’s plenty to go around with exploration in the vicinity of Chalice’s extraordinary discovery reaching fever pitch lately.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
