Mineral Commodities Ltd (ASX:MRC) has entered into a landowner agreement through its 90% owned subsidiary, Skaland Graphite AS to explore the Hesten and Vardfjellet graphite prospects, located on the island of Senja, Norway.
The prospects are situated about four km west of the Bukken exploration prospect, for which Skaland was granted exploration rights in mid 2020, and are approximately 15km southeast of MRC’s existing Skaland Graphite Mining Operation.
CEO Mark Caruso said Skaland is the highest-grade flake graphite operation in the world and largest producing graphite mine in Europe. The agreements provide MRC with exclusive exploration rights for up to six years over an area of 6.9 sq. km.
With the addition of Hesten and Vardfjellet to our existing Bukken exploration project, we have secured some of the most prospective ground proximal to Skaland,” Mr Caruso said.
“By securing these prospects, MRC has the opportunity to further expand on our strategy to build our resource inventory at Senja.
“This investment in exploration highlights MRC’s commitment to graphite production at Skaland and contributes to our overall expansion goals. We look forward to unlocking more of the critical raw materials required to meet our plan to produce anode material in Norway.”
In July 2020, as a part of a broader strategy to secure new graphite deposits and expand future production at Senja in northern Norway, the Company entered into a binding agreement to explore the Bukken prospect, the largest known continuous graphite anomaly in Norway. The Hesten and Vardfjellet graphite prospects are situated just 2.5km apart and complement the Bukken prospect, which is located only 4km to the west.
All three prospects were identified by the Geological Survey of Norway (NGU) through regional helicopter-borne geophysical surveys (NGU, 2017). These prospects are located on the north west of the island of Senja, about 50km south west of Tromso, the nearest major town, with a population of around 65,000.
Detailed geological mapping, including structural mapping, thin section analysis, sampling and assaying, was undertaken in 2003, 2016 and again in 2018 for all prospects. The Hesten and Vardfjellet prospects have been surveyed with various geophysical techniques numerous times by the NGU since 2012, including helicopter and ground electromagnetic (EM), Charged Potential (CP) and Self Potential (SP) as well as one profile of 2D resistivity and Induced Polarisation (IP) at Hesten (NGU, 2019).