Precious metals exploration company Palladium One has published an updated mineral resource estimate (MRE) for its Läntinen Koillismaa (LK) project, in north-central Finland, increasing the Kaukua area’s indicated resources tonnes by about 250%.

The project now has 1.1-million ounces total precious metals (0.89 g/t), 111-million pounds copper (0.13%), 92-million pounds nickel (0.11%) and five-million pounds cobalt (65 g/t) classified as indicated, contained in 38.2-million tonnes.

In the inferred category, LK has 1.1-million ounces total precious metals (0.86 g/t), 173-million pounds copper (0.16%), 152-million pounds nickel (0.14%) and eight-million pounds cobalt (74 g/t), contained in 49.7-million tonnes.

The indicated resources increased by 248% and the inferred resources by 14%.

Besides the maiden resource estimate, Palladium One also reported other milestones at LK, including advanced metallurgical testing that demonstrates repeatable metallurgical recoveries and the ability to produce both a high-value copper and nickel concentrate using a conventional flotation recovery process.

“These milestones substantially improve the economic potential by confirming scale and by delivering clarity of recovery rates for various rock types.

“With a grade of 30% copper in the copper concentrate and a value of about $4 200/t for the nickel concentrate, both are highly marketable, which bodes well for future concentrate marketing negotiations,” said president and CEO Derrick Weyrauch.

He added that Palladium One had accelerated baseline environmental studies and that it planned to advance a preliminary economic assessment for LK.

The bulk of Palladium One’s 2022 exploration efforts, however, would be in Canada, directed to the Tyko nickel/cobalt project.

“Once drill permits are received, we plan to test several multi-line VTEM anomalies where highly anomalous soil sample values of copper, nickel and cobalt were discovered in 2021,” said Weyrauch.