Canadian-listed Australian prospector BlueBird Battery Metals has hit high-grade cobalt at its Ashburton Project in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, revealing rock chip samples as rich as 0.42% cobalt.
The encouraging samples are part of the miner’s initial phase of exploration at Ashburton which has encountered cobalt bearing mineralisation at surface.
The Ashburton project consists of four exploration licences located 450 km south of the town of Karratha.
Cobalt from Ashburton has been demonstrated to stretch along a 15km strike length and the upstart Canadian has announced it will accelerate phase two of its prospecting program based off the preliminary results.
Phase two features further rock chip sampling from 30km of strike at Ashburton, which includes ground covered by phase one exploration.
We are delighted by the cobalt grades we have encountered over a large area at Ashbuton, in Western Australia,” Nav Dhaliwal, Chairman and CEO of BlueBird said.
“Further sampling is already underway and will focus on a number of additional prospects during the second phase of field work.
“The scale of the targets across our extensive land holdings is becoming increasingly clear and is very encouraging. This is an under-explored region and we are looking forward to advancing our exploration activity,” he said.
The Ashburton project has demonstrated its ability to host manganese mineralisation in addition to cobalt.
The manganese component has proven an intriguing exploration target for BlueBird, with its cobalt anomalies strongly correlated with the manganese enrichment.
Ashburton has been demonstrated to host manganese grades as high as 27.8%.
