PERTH (miningweekly.com) – A geological review of the Maggie Hays deposit, located at the Lake Johnston deposit, in Western Australia, has resulted in a 50% increase in the indicated resource, owner Poseidon Nickel said on Tuesday.
Poseidon noted that 80% of the drilled resource at Maggie Hays was classified as indicated.
The Maggie Hays deposit is estimated to host 3.5-million tonnes of ore, grading 1.49% nickel for 52 000 t of contained nickel.
The deposit is one of two that makes up the larger Lake Johnston project, which Poseidon acquired from Norilsk Nickel in a A$1-million deal in September last year.
The company had previously estimated that a capital injection of about A$8.3-million would be required to restart operations at Lake Johnston. The project included a modern 1.5-million-tonne-a-year treatment plant and a large ground position. The project had been in production until April 2013, at which time it went into care and maintenance.
The resource update was only undertaken at the Maggie Hays deposit, as this is where it initially planned to restart mining. The Emily Ann North deposit was considered smaller, but higher-grade, and was located adjacent to the Emily Ann mine, which Poseidon believed could be mined at a future date.
However, access to the Emily Ann North deposit could only be gained through the Emily Ann mine, which was currently flooded.
The Maggie Hays mine, in contrast, had been maintained in good operational condition, with near-immediate access to the nickel mineralisation.
Poseidon told shareholders on Tuesday that the company had contracted engineering consultants to start a detailed mine planning and scheduling programme ahead of an ore reserve estimation, to look at maximising the ore extraction and redeveloping the mine infrastructure to better access ore zones.