It would appear Pursuit Minerals has a world-class vanadium deposit on its hands at its Koitelainen project in northern Finland on the back of exceptional vanadium grades from drilling at the project.
Investors welcomed the news with the stock (ASX:PUR) jumping as high as 14c, up 33%, in Thursday’s trade after nine drill holes from the Koitelainen V prospect produced magnetite concentrates with vanadium oxide values ranging from 2 – 3.7 per cent and average 2.3 per cent.
Best results include 8 metres at 3.1 per cent from 77.15 metres, 10 metres at 2.7 per cent from 16.85 metres, 10 metres at 2.4 per cent from 10.85 metres.
Globally, magnetite concentrates containing vanadium oxide in excess of 1.5 per cent are considered high grade and only the Maracas Mine in Brazil (3 per cent vanadium oxide in magnetite concentrate) and the Rhovan mine in South Africa (2.3 per cent vanadium oxide in magnetite concentrate) produce magnetite concentrates with vanadium levels consistently above 2.2 per cent.
Pursuit Minerals Managing Director Jeremy Read said the vanadium grades were exceptional and indicate the highly prospective nature of the Koitelainen V prospect.
The magnetite concentrates produced by these nine high-grade vanadium holes at Koitelainen V place this prospect in the upper echelon of vanadium prospects globally,” Mr Read said.
“The nine holes are associated with three sub-parallel magnetic trends which extend 2-2.5km beyond the areas drilled with the nine high-grade holes.
“The vanadium mineralisation in the Eastern and Central magnetic trends are open both north-south and to the east, while the Western Magnetic trend is open to the south and east, so there is a lot of potential to extend the known high-grade vanadium mineralisation through further exploration work.”
“Furthermore, the high-grade vanadium mineralisation comes to surface and the overall package of vanadium mineralisation is consistently 30-40m thick.” Mr Read added.
Pursuit is continuing to compile the historical data from 27 drill holes to design a drill program to test extensions to the high-grade vanadium mineralisation at the Koitelainen V prospect.
It is anticipated that data compilation will be completed in late June and the drill program will be undertaken during the next winter field season from November 2018 until April 2019.
The Koitelainen V Prospect contains a historical mineral estimate of 15 million tonnes at 0.4 per cent vanadium oxide.
