After $15M MinRes plant sale fell through, Poseidon Nickel flags gold rock chips at Lake Johnston

Poseidon Nickel (ASX:POS), a victim of the nickel price crash, has returned to its Lake Johnston nickel acreage – and found early-stage evidence of gold.

Back in March, Poseidon was thinking about selling Lake Johnston altogether. It had this on its mind when it inked a deal sell a 200-worker nickel plant to Mineral Resources for a paltry $15M.

Former CEO Craig Jones quit one day after that sale was made. Then, MinRes ended up walking away from the deal two months later. They didn’t take the plant.

For Poseidon, it was a fairly rapid series of events: back in August of 2023, Poseidon was hopeful it could start producing early next year.

The company is now, a year later, highlighting gold rock chip samples to the market. For rock chips, the grades aren’t impressive – Poseidon flagged reads of 1.25g/t.

Quartz bearing shears at surface were targeted for the rock chip samples, assay results from a soil sampling program are due back later this year. If there’s anything promising, drillers will be told about it.

A copper gold anomaly (based on soil data) has been extended into the company’s Mantis tenement – “largely untested” – and the company wrote on Monday that the soil anomaly “[is a] likely link to the mineralised copper-gold drill intersection nearby.”

Further drilling is required to ascertain that, one way or the other.

“Rock chip samples collected on a recent site visit to Black Swan have returned anomalous gold from quartz bearing shear zones that are located in the same area as [previously] recovered gold nuggets,” Poseidon CEO Brendan Shalders said.

“Recently received soil sample assay results testing the extension of the Billy Ray Prospect at Lake Johnston have confirmed the continuation of the large Cu-Au anomaly.

“The anomaly remains open to the North-East, with geological structures suggesting the potential for further Cu-Au anomalism over the newly acquired Mantis tenement.”

POS last traded at 0.4cps.