Base metals explorer Talon Metals has intercepted new high-grade nickel/copper mineralisation outside the current resource area of the Tamarack project, which the company believes has confirmed a new “system” of high-grade nickel/copper mineralisation in the Tamarack Intrusive Complex.

“While still early in the process, these preliminary results provide definitive evidence that the Tamarack Intrusive Complex has district-scale potential, and as a consequence of these exciting initial results, we intend to make further exploration along the Tamarack Intrusive Complex a priority in 2023,” said chief exploration and operations officer Brian Goldner.

Goldner continued: “Last year’s discovery of the shallow high-grade nickel mineralisation in the CGO West area started with only a small 1.3-m intercept of high-grade nickel massive sulphide – that mineralisation ultimately grew to nearly 14 m thick, only 25 m away. I expect this same thickening could occur in the new area called the ‘Raptor Zone’, especially with the amount of unexplored space we have to work with.”

Talon’s in-house team has been tasked with evaluating the exploration upside over the entire length of the 11-mile-long Tamarack Intrusive Complex starting at the northern end of the complex where the Raptor Zone has been identified. The name 'Raptor' has been chosen given the resemblance to the iconic predator’s profile that shows up in the magnetic survey.

Talon is a joint venture with Rio Tinto on the Tamarack project, in central Minnesota. The project will supply electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla with 75 000 t in concentrate over six years, once it reaches commercial production.

Talon chief external affairs officer and head of climate strategy at Talon, Todd Malan, commented that the prospect that the US may host more high-grade nickel mineralisation within its domestic mineral endowment was “very timely”.

“In the last year, over $30-billion in investment has been committed for new nickel battery manufacturing in the US. We have more exploration drilling to undertake with our in-house team to understand if these new areas have a resource that is of the size and quality to represent an economic and mineable resource, but these results show where we need to target our drilling teams. America is currently dependent on foreign sources of battery grade nickel. If we can find more high-grade nickel in the US, we can start to reduce our dependency on China, Russia and Indonesia for nickel and other battery minerals.”