The share price of Toronto-listed Talon Metals rose on Monday, as the exploration company announced high-grade drilling results from its Tamarack project, in Minnesota.
The explorer, which owns Tamarack in a joint venture with commodities major Rio Tinto, drilled 101.71 m of high-grade mineralisation at Tamarack, grading 1.94% nickel and 1.84% copper with high levels of platinum-group metals present.
“Intercepting 101.71 m of high-grade nickel/copper mineralisation is a reminder of the uniqueness of the Tamarack nickel project’s US nickel resources.
“Most projects aspire to intercept just 2 m of high-grade nickel,” said Talon CEO Henry van Rooyen.
The drill hole was completed in partnership with a research team from Columbia University, funded by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy Mining Innovations for Negative Emissions Resource Recovery programme.
Van Rooyen said that the goal of the Columbia collaboration was to add to the understanding of the orebody, while also supporting research aimed at recovering additional nickel, copper and other critical minerals used in clean energy systems.
One exciting aspect of this drill hole was that the copper and PGE grades were much higher than anticipated compared to the nickel grades, especially in the lower zone of mineralisation where 12.4 m assayed at 2.98% nickel, 3.84% copper, 1.38 g/t palladium, 2.79 g/t platinum, and 2.68 g/t gold (6.85 g/t PGEt+Au), added chief exploration officer and COO Brian Goldner.
Talon’s share price gained 6%, trading at C$0.26 apiece.