Western Australian nickel hopeful Estrella Resources (ASX:ESR) has completed maiden drilling at its Spargoville project with aplomb, extracting high-grade nickel sulphides from a historic minesite located 20 km south-west of the town of Kambalda.
The drilling campaign occurred at the pit floor of mine 5A – with the Estrella-controlled Spargoville area containing a series of dormant mines that had extracted Kambalda-style nickel formations.
Estrella scooped up the mines and surrounding areas in September 2017 with the aim of using modern exploration techniques to identify further nickel resources.
The first exploration holes to be punched by the prospector delivered a top result of 15m at 10.45% nickel, 0.78% copper, and 0.20% cobalt from a depth of 20m.
Other notable hits included 5m at 11.32% nickel, 0.54% copper, 0.21% cobalt and 0.42g/t palladium from a depth of 61m.
These nickel results are some of the best nickel sulphide intercepts that I have seen in my 14 years exploring nickel sulphide orebodies in Western Australia,” Estrella chief executive officer, Mr Daws said.
“The outlook for nickel is bullish with the forecast of large supply deficits and the need to provide quality nickel stocks to the EV / battery storage manufacturing industries.
“The current market soundings remind me a lot of the early stages of the nickel boom of 2007 and I certainly look forward to what the future has installed for our shareholders,” he said.
Assays from the 5A mine have been consistently higher than historic drilling and the company has said it is further encouraged by the emergence of elevated platinum group and cobalt mineralisation.
Estrella will quickly move to conducting metalwork on its high-grade results, announcing its intention to collect bulk samples from its drill spoils.
