Poseidon Nickel Ltd (ASX:POS, OTC:PSDNF) continues to advance the Black Swan Nickel Project toward a production restart, making progress on the ‘Fill the Mill’ strategy as it attempts to grow the known resource and diversify feed stock sources for the processing circuit.
Poseidon believes recent high-grade assays from resource drilling indicate the potential for an increased mineral reserve, with the possibility of adding to Black Swan’s JORC-compliant reserve of 6,800 tonnes of nickel. Assays of note include:
- PTMD005 - 12.9 metres at 10.63% nickel;
- PTMD007 - 6 metres at 11.36% nickel;
- PTMD014 - 11 metres at 13.26% nickel;
- PTMD015 - 3.5 metres at 16.30% nickel; and
- PTMD018 - 15 metres at 17.92% nickel.
Additionally, extensional drilling beneath the existing Black Swan pit has indicated the potential for greater consistency of metallurgically-favourable serpentinite mineralisation in the disseminated zone.
Ready to begin restart workstreams
Poseidon Nickel managing director and CEO Peter Harold commented: “We continue to progress the 'Fill the Mill' strategy at Black Swan.
“The resource drilling programs on the Black Swan Disseminated orebody and within the Silver Swan Channel continue to deliver positive results which show potential for an increase in the mining inventory for the restart.
“In addition, further knowledge of these resources builds our knowledge of the mineralogy and metallurgy and will help us refine the ore blending strategy to achieve the optimal concentrate specifications.
“Progress to date on the bankable feasibility study has provided the necessary outputs from our internal preliminary economic assessment to provide comfort for us to commence a number of workstreams to support the Black Swan restart.”
Black Swan restart strategy
Poseidon has decided to fast track several initiatives due to progress on the ‘Fill the Mill’ strategy, including:
- Further exploration down plunge of the existing Silver Swan resource to grow the high-grade mining inventory;
- Commencing studies on dewatering the Black Swan open pit in 2022;
- Commencing environmental and mine approvals process;
- Employing personnel for key project management roles;
- Undertaking studies on site-based accommodation and commence approvals process; and
- Progress planning and approval for grid power allocation.
Importantly for Poseidon, terms requested from prospective offtake parties indicate interest from the market in preliminary Black Swan concentrate specifications.
About Poseidon Nickel
Poseidon Nickel is a Western Australia-focused nickel sulphide exploration and development company with a resource base of around 400,000 tonnes of nickel and 180,000 ounces of gold.
The company's overarching aim is to explore and eventually establish nickel operations where project risk capital and operating costs are low.
Poseidon is developing the Windarra, Black Swan and the Lake Johnston nickel projects, where exploration upside has been demonstrated within the Abi Rose deposit at Lake Johnston and the discovery of the Golden Swan mineralisation at Black Swan.