Australian mineral exploration company Duketon Mining (ASX:DKM) has started a 4,000m diamond drilling (DD) program at its wholly owned namesake project in Western Australia.
The company says drilling has been designed to focus on exploration targets and extensions to known mineralisation within the greater Bulge ultramafic complex of its Duketon Nickel Project.
Adding on, Duketon Mining notes the first drillhole will target a ‘significant’ electromagnetic (EM) anomaly that was reported in late 2022 west of the project’s Rosie deposit on the C2 contact.
“The first target that we are drilling looks fantastic and has all of the ingredients’ that you want”
Characteristics of this EM anomaly include over 600m of strike length, a conductance of 5,000 siemens, and a top plate modelled at 350m below surface. Historic drilling up dip of the plate has returned intercepts including 3.25m @ 0.74% nickel (Ni) and 1.78g/t platinum (Pt) + palladium (Pd).
Addressing the drilling program, Duketon Mining Managing Director Stuart Fogarty said: “It is great to get drilling for 2023. This is the first of a number of programs coming up that will include diamond, RC and aircore drilling.
The first target that we are drilling looks fantastic and has all of the ingredients’ that you want – a strong EM response, proximal empirical support from historical drilling and sitting within an ultramafic complex that already hosts 100k tonnes of nickel metal in JORC compliant resources, not to mention the 250k oz of PGE’s.”
The company also notes the commencement of drilling comes following the return of ‘high-grade’ nickel and up to 30g/t palladium at the Rose deposit, as announced by the company earlier this month.
These results were returned from drilling conducted outside of the current indicated resource, which was targeting an area of 150m of strike that had limited intersections between the original Rosie resource and the historical Nariz mineralisation.
Duketon Mining is an ASX-listed company focused on building a ‘significant’ mining and exploration company through considered use of funds whilst maintaining a constrained share register to maximise shareholder value.
The company’s namesake project is located within the Duketon Greenstone Belt north of the township of Laverton in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields mineral province, which has returned over 87,000 tonnes of nickel and 8 million ounces (Moz) of gold.
The project comprises the Tate, Camp Oven, Albany, Rosie, Somerset, and Hack’s Bore prospects, as well as the C2 Resource, with all associated tenements being wholly owned by Duketon Mining.
