##{"id":92589,"date":"2021-03-26T13:36:25","date_gmt":"2021-03-26T02:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/?p=92589"},"modified":"2021-03-26T13:36:27","modified_gmt":"2021-03-26T02:36:27","slug":"several-catalysts-are-on-the-horizon-for-auroch-minerals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/2021\/03\/26\/several-catalysts-are-on-the-horizon-for-auroch-minerals\/","title":{"rendered":"Several Catalysts Are On The Horizon For Auroch Minerals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:center\"><em>&#8211;The below is a company-sponsored announcement&#8211;<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/ckfinder\/userfiles\/images\/AOU%20image.jpeg\" style=\"height:526px;width:832px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Shares in Auroch Minerals Limited ((<a href=\"https:\/\/finfeed.com\/company\/aou\/\">AOU<\/a>)) have soared roughly 300% in the last six months, but there could be more upside to come.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Today, the company announced that it has commenced diamond drilling at its Leinster Nickel Project in Western Australia.<\/p>\n<p>This nickel sulphide focused base-metal resource company, is building value through targeted high-impact exploration in Western Australia.<\/p>\n<p>AOU has three nickel projects in Western Australia and all sit in the Norseman-Wiluna Greenstone Belt, home to some of the best nickel projects globally including Leinster, Mt Keith, Kambalda and Widgiemooltha.<\/p>\n<p>All of AOU&rsquo;s projects, including Leinster, Saints and Nepean are highly prospective for near-surface, high-grade nickel sulphide mineralisation.<\/p>\n<p>High-grade nickel is a feature of the Leinster region and today&rsquo;s results show that the second hole (HNDD002) has confirmed thick shallow high-grade nickel-copper-PGE sulphide mineralisation, with the logged massive sulphides interval reporting 7.3 metres at 2.2% nickel, 0.53% copper from 143 metres.<\/p>\n<p>The first hole accepted 4.1 metres of high-grade nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation grading 2.4% nickel and 0.61% copper from 119 metres.<\/p>\n<p>Both the quality of the grades and the near-surface nature of the mineralisation suggest that this could be a highly economical project.<\/p>\n<p>The drill programme at Leinster consists of four diamond drill-holes and will be followed by reverse-circulation (RC) drilling to test strike potential and some of the more-advanced regional targets across the Leinster tenure.<\/p>\n<p>The combined diamond and RC drill programmes will consist of approximately 1200 metres of diamond drilling and 1800 metres of RC drilling.<\/p>\n<p>Drilling success at Leinster would be highly material given that BHP has expressed a desire to ramp up its nickel production to meet growing global demand fuelled by the shift to electric vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>Mining giant BHP could boost production on commercially viable terms and has commenced trying to source contracts with Nickel Sulphide deposits to feed into its Nickel West refineries.<\/p>\n<h2>Nepean could be the game changer<\/h2>\n<p>AOU is also expecting the delivery of assay results from its maiden drilling program at the Nepean Nickel Project.<\/p>\n<p>The Nepean Nickel Project contains the historic high-grade Nepean nickel sulphide mine and was the second producing nickel mine in Australia, producing just over 1.1 million tonnes of ore between 1970 and 1987.<\/p>\n<p>The ore was treated by Western Mining Corporation (WMC, now BHP Group Ltd) at its Kambalda processing facilities.<\/p>\n<p>The Nepean mine closed in 1987 due to low nickel prices, leaving significant nickel sulphide resources unmined.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of 1986 when a fight or flight decision had to be made, the nickel price was hovering in the vicinity of US$1.60 per pound, about 80% below current levels.<\/p>\n<p>Today, the nickel price is over US$7.00 per pound.<\/p>\n<p>The Nepean nickel mine has a remnant high-grade JORC (2004)-compliant resource: 13,250t contained nickel @ 2.20% Ni. (It should be noted that the resource is JORC(2004) only (i.e. historic estimate) and not compliant with the JORC (2012) code required now.)&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There is high potential at Nepean to build on the existing remnant resources with drill targets along strike and at depth.<\/p>\n<p>Nepean is just 70km from BHP&rsquo;s Kambalda Nickel Concentrator and Smelter and again the presence of nearby processing facilities operated by third parties, including BHP&rsquo;s Kambalda smelter, is a substantial benefit for AOU as BHP looks for more nickel supply.<\/p>\n<p>AOU has identified several high-priority areas at Nepean, and a 3,500 metre reverse-circulation (RC) drill programme has already yielded some extremely promising results including 3 metres at 3.7% nickel, including 2 metres at 5.1% nickel, as well as one metre at 5.6% nickel.<\/p>\n<p>With plenty more drilling results to filter through in the coming weeks, there are plenty of catalysts investors can look forward to.<\/p>\n<p>Looking beyond this drilling program, AOU&nbsp;expects to complete a resource estimate by year-end, enabling it to fast track Nepean to production.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Earlier today the corporate announcement above was publicly released. FNArena is acting as a partner in&nbsp;distribution to broaden the reach. No journalists have been involved in the re-publication of this announcement.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Technical limitations<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>If you are reading this story through a third party distribution channel and you cannot see the image included<\/em>, <em>we apologise, but technical limitations are to blame.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Find out why FNArena subscribers like the service so much: &quot;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/index4.cfm?type=dsp_newsitem&amp;n=29EB960D-9DFF-C00E-7F6B464E5D52E250\">Your Feedback (Thank You)<\/a>&quot; &#8211; Warning this story contains unashamedly positive feedback on the service provided.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>FNArena&nbsp;is proud about its track record and past achievements: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fnarena.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/03\/rudis-view-ten-years-on-the-world-is-still-turning\/\">Ten Years On<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SPONSORED: Shares in Auroch Minerals have soared roughly 300% in the last six months, but there could be more upside to come<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92589\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staging.fnarena.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}