Renforth Resources Inc (CSE:RFR, OTCQB:RFHRF) has hailed what it called a new "battery metals discovery" at its Victoria West target at its wholly-owned 260 square kilometre (sq km) Surimeau property in Quebec.
The company has reported assays from 21 drill holes sunk over three different phases and over a 2.2 kilometre (km) strike at Victoria West, with each hole showing mineralization and four deeper holes demonstrating an increase in grade.
Victoria West is one of five areas of known polymetallic mineralization at Surimeau, which is contiguous to the Canadian Malartic mine. Other areas include the Huston target, which sits 18 km northwest.
The company interprets Victoria West to be a nickel-containing ultramafic unit, juxtaposed with VMS-style copper-zinc mineralization which occurs over around 5 km of strike in the western end of the 20 km central anomaly at Surimeau.
READ: Renforth Resources exposes 180m of continuous visible mineralization on surface at Surimeau project
Nicole Brewster, CEO of Renforth, told investors that Surimeau hosted the company's first exploration for nickel, copper, cobalt - three of the primary metals required for batteries, particularly for electric vehicles (EVs).
"We, as a team, are very pleased to present Victoria West to shareholders as an interesting new battery metals discovery, this is very early stage with much more work to do as we are still open on strike, within a 20km structure, and at depth, with our best intersection in this program occurring between only approximately 50 and 80m vertical depth," she said.
"Well located with road access and hydro-electric power Surimeau, with several known areas of polymetallic mineralization, is at the very beginning of its exploration and development cycle.
"It is quite exciting to work on an old occurrence, thought to be small scale and, as it was not gold, not of much interest in the 1980’s which, now that we are beginning to unlock the true size of the occurrence and identify the metals it contains, grows in importance each day."
Among the drill highlights was one hole, which hit a 111.05 meter (m) mineralized interval starting at 57m downhole, averaging 0.17% nickel and 139.58 parts per million (ppm) cobalt, over the entire interval, within which the highest grading sub-interval of 40m assayed 0.22% nickel and 168.98 ppm cobalt.
Another hole resulted in a 119.7m mineralized interval starting at 81.3m depth, averaging 0.13% nickel and 90.49 ppm cobalt over the entire interval, within which the highest grading sub-interval of 0.55m assayed 0.95% copper, 0.17% nickel and 217 ppm cobalt.
Renforth said its future plans at Surimeau include the investigation of the around 14km of magnetic anomaly between Victoria West and Colonie.
This will be carried out in a bid to determine whether the mineralized ultramafic mineralization occurring with the magnetic anomaly over a 5 km portion of the anomaly continues the length of the anomaly.
As well as Surimeau, Renforth holds the Parbec open-pit constrained gold deposit in Malartic.
The company also holds the Malartic West property, the site of a copper/silver discovery, and Nixon-Bartleman, west of Timmins Ontario, with gold present on surface over a strike length of around 500m.
Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com