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Chalice eyes underground mine at Gonneville

Chalice

Chalice Mining has intersected high-grade sulphides up to 400m below its current Gonneville resource at the Julimar nickel-copper-platinum group elements (PGE) in Western Australia.

It comes as Chalice announced a fresh batch of extensional drilling assays at Gonneville, with promising palladium and platinum hits reported.

Most significantly, the JD232 drill hole hit 3.7m at 7.3 grams per tonne (g/t) palladium, 1.2g/t platinum, 0.7g/t gold, 0.6 per cent nickel, 1 per cent copper (or 4.5 per cent nickel equivalent) from 429.3m.

Five reverse circulation (RC)/diamond rigs are currently conducting step-out, infill and metallurgical drilling at Gonneville. Drilling is extending high-grade sulphide zones to the south-west and north-west of Gonneville and improving confidence in the shallower depths of the inferred resource.

Chalice is also focussed on its Hartog, Jansz and Torres targets at Julimar, with 70 drill holes planned across the Hartog-Dampier area over the coming months.

“Two diamond rigs are currently progressing the first-ever exploration drill program … within the approximately 6.5km x 2km Hartog area immediately north of Gonneville,” Chalice said in a statement.

“Current permit restrictions have limited drilling locations to existing tracks, hence only lower priority targets have been tested to date. The company is awaiting feedback in relation to the permitting restrictions in the coming weeks before moving to the higher-priority EM (electromagnetic)/gravity/soil targets.”

One aircore (AC) drill rig is conducting initial shallow reconnaissance drilling at the Jansz and Torres targets, as Chalice looks to determine the presence of any intrusive mafic-ultramafic geology.

Chalice has completed a combined total of 776 diamond and RC drill holes for approximately 200,000m at the project to date. 219 AC drill holes have also been completed.

“Recent step-out drilling at Gonneville has again highlighted the outstanding growth potential of the Tier-1 scale resource, and the opportunity for significant growth of the deposit to support future underground mining,” Chalice managing director and chief executive officer Alex Dorsch said.

“The Gonneville intrusion is approximately 500m thick and wide-open to the north-west, and we continue to see pockets of very high-grade sulphide mineralisation as we target extensions well beyond the current resource boundaries, so step-out drilling will continue for the foreseeable future to assess the overall extent of the mineral system.”

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