Carnavale Resources Ltd (ASX:CAV) (FRA:YBB) has hit up to 3.45 g/t and 3.39 g/t 4PGE including up to 12.55% chrome in rock chips during a reconnaissance field trip at the Barracuda PGE-Nickel-Copper Project near Mount Magnet in Western Australia.
The visit was undertaken to confirm prospectivity and access for future fieldwork with four rock chip samples taken from the chromite layer within the project area.
4PGE is the addition of platinum, palladium, rhodium and ruthenium as an aggregate and Carnavale is buoyed by strong current prices for these metals.
Rhodium is around US$25,000/ounce, palladium at US$2,500/ounce and platinum at US$1,200/ounce (Ref Kitco.com March 29, 2021) while ruthenium is about $12,200/kilogram (Ref Umicore Sales March 30, 2021).
Rock chip sample results detailing platinum group elements.
“Strong results”
Chairman Ron Gajewski said: “It is exciting to be getting strong PGE results from surface sampling on the ground at the Barracuda Project as quickly as this.
“An exploration plan has been developed using all the available data including the recently acquired remote sensing data. Planning is underway for a new Helicopter borne VTEM survey to uncover sulphide bodies at depth.
“Carnavale is currently exploring for PGE, nickel and gold at multiple projects, with results from the second round of aircore drilling at the Kookynie Gold Project due in a few weeks and the soil sampling program is underway at the Ora Banda Gold project.”
Highly ‘significant’ outcrop
While this outcrop of PGE mineralisation is of limited area extent, Carnavale believes it is significant in that it demonstrates basic and ultrabasic magmas (crystallising as mafic and ultramafic rocks) were interacting to concentrate PGE metals to potentially economic grades of PGE mineralisation.
No further holes were drilled and no further exploration for magmatic PGE-nickel-copper sulphide has been conducted within the area since 1990.
This highly prospective area has the potential to host substantial magmatic, mafic-ultramafic intrusion-related Pt-Pd-Ni-Cu sulphide deposits and has received no attention since Pancon drilled 1,811m of diamond and shallow holes in 1988.
Broader exploration approach
View of Barracuda Project close to PGE rock chips.
Carnavale intends to take a broader approach to evaluating this fertile intrusive sequence of mafic-ultramafic rocks by applying technologies that were not available to Pancon.
The company intends to apply the latest airborne EM technology to delineate conductors for drill testing that potentially represent either magmatic, hydrothermal or structural accumulations of nickel-copper-PGE rich sulphide mineralisation in this poorly explored and drilled terrain.
No ground-based electrical geophysical surveys (EM, IP) has ever been conducted within E58/551.
Next steps include:
- Digitally capture the Pancontinental soil geochemistry and contour the PGE, nickel and copper data to define metal-anomalous trends;
- Follow-up airborne EM anomalies with ground EM, with priority given to areas with established, coincident PGE-copper-nickel soil anomalism; and
- Drill-test targets subject to results.