Sonia Madigan:
Explorer Western Yilgarn is making significant progress with its newly renamed Julimar West project, which is right next door to Chalice Mining’s Gonneville deposit in a neighbourhood cited as Australia’s greatest nickel, copper, platinum group element and gold address.
The company has identified several targets to pursue and is expecting its exploration license agreement to be granted very soon.
Western Yilgarn’s General Manager, Gavin Rutherford, and Technical Advisor Beau Nichols are with me now. Good to see you both.
Gavin Rutherford & Beau Nichols:
Hi Sonia.
Sonia Madigan:
Well, you’ve secured ground in a very hot spot there, Gavin. How big could this be for Western Yilgarn?
Gavin Rutherford:
Could be massive. it’s certainly a hot spot and I think everybody knows the Chalice story. We happen to be the neighbours to the west that are measurable in distance in hundreds or a couple of thousand meters.
So we are the unknown neighbour and we’re aiming to change that.
Sonia Madigan:
Now imagine there would be quite some competition for ground in that space. How did Western Yilgarn come to secure it?
Gavin Rutherford:
We re-listed Pacific Bauxite, which was a company under administration and its asset that is a subject of this discussion was a lease application, E 75111, that is the neighbouring lease to Chalice’s lease to where the Gonneville deposit or discovery resides.
Sonia Madigan:
Now Beau, from a technical perspective, what can you tell us about the ground on which the Julimar West project lies?
Beau Nichols:
It’s basically located two and a half kilometres from the edge of the Gonneville pit, which is owned by Chalice, which is the Gonneville intrusion, which dips about 45 degrees into the Julimar West tenement.
The Gonneville intrusion is, I think it’s the biggest undeveloped nickel equivalent deposit in the world at the moment with 3 million tonnes of nickel equivalent. That intrusion is going into the Julimar West tenement.
So the other interesting targets we have there, we’ve got potential sub-parallel structures that we’ve identified in existing geophysics, so that could be a repetition of Gonneville. And we also have identified pegmatites in the field and from geoscience Western Australia grab samples. There have only ever been two grab samples taken in this entire permit, so it’s very unexplored. Those two grab samples that we looked at had 1 per cent tin as well as quite high-grade niobium and tantrum. If you know pegmatites, we’ve got Greenbushes to the south, it was a tin and tantalum mine to start with, and as you got deeper, it became one of the biggest and best lithium projects in the world.
Sonia Madigan:
Now how do you expect to get stuck into exploration there?
Beau Nichols:
We’ve got the benefit of what Chalice has already done. It’s very well documented how they’ve discovered and extended the current resource there. It’s not complicated. We’re going to do a combination of surface geochemistry and geophysics.
Sonia Madigan:
Now, back to you Gavin. How are shareholders reacting to the company’s moves in this area?
Gavin Rutherford:
The shareholders reacting very positively, as we are. It’s important to understand that we’re just on the foothills of Perth, so our lease starts about 70 kilometres out of Perth.
As Beau has indicated, and as the market knows, the Chalice geology is globally significant and that is residing in a globally significant exploration and mining jurisdiction, which is Western Australia and the Yilgarn Craton.
If we want to be a little bit more specific, so what shareholders don’t know yet, and I can’t profess to make any guarantees about this, is that I’m certain the Chalice deposit will be mined at some stage.
Now the futurists in us need to understand that there’ll probably be techniques used that we are not familiar with. I’m positive that Chalice will be a winner with its deposit in a de facto relationship. Our geological circumstance should be married to Gonneville’s, and my expectation is that the shareholders will be progressively made aware as we’re able to access our ground of what a future we’ve got that’s linked to Gonneville.
Sonia Madigan:
Thanks so much for the update. Gavin Rutherford, Beau Nichols from Western Yilgarn.