Makes New Greenfields Nickel Sulphide Discovery In Brazil
Centaurus Metals (ASX: CTM) has made a significant new discovery at the Tigre Prospect in its greenfields exploration drilling at its 100%-owned Jaguar Nickel Sulphide Project (JNP) in the Carajás Mineral Province of northern Brazil.
The company believes the discovery has the potential to grow the Project’s Resource base and potentially extend mine life. C
Managing Director, Darren Gordon, said the maiden RC drilling program had yielded early success at the Tigre prospect, with significant nickel sulphide zones intersected in multiple holes.
“The visual results are very encouraging and demonstrate the enormous prospectivity outside the known deposits, highlighting the opportunity to further expand the already significant Resource inventory at Jaguar,” Mr Gordon said.
“There is almost 100,000m of drilling within the known Jaguar Deposit limits with less than 5,000m of drilling covering the rest of the tenement. The fact that we have encountered significant new mineralisation so early in the program speaks volumes for this potential.
“We have a pipeline of outstanding greenfields exploration prospects that we are now systematically testing with the RC rig. All these targets are located within a five km radius of the proposed Jaguar Project ROM pad and, as such, any new discoveries from the greenfields drilling have the potential to contribute to mine life extensions beyond the current 13 years.
“We now have eight rigs on site with another rig to arrive in the coming weeks. This expanded drilling capacity will allow us to continue aggressive work on both greenfields and resource drilling in conjunction with the development drilling required for project development activities.
“This multi-pronged approach sets us up for what should be a big second half of project growth at Jaguar.
“Jaguar is already a standout project in terms of scale and quality amongst undeveloped nickel sulphide projects worldwide and, at the planned nickel production rate of +20,000tpa, Centaurus is firmly on track to become a global Top-10 nickel sulphide producer.
“The exceptional growth potential we are now demonstrating can only further enhance Jaguar’s credentials as a potential source of clean, low-emission nickel sulphides to meet surging global nickel demand as the world moves rapidly to embrace electrification and decarbonisation.”
The Tigre Prospect is interpreted to be the south-western extension of the McCandless Fault, one of the most important regional scale mineralising structures in the Carajás.
Hosted at the contact between the felsic subvolcanic (porphyritic dacite) and the Xingu Basement gneiss, the Tigre Prospect has at least 700m of prospective strike length represented by a strong discrete late-time GeoTEM anomaly coincident with a FLEM conductor plate, discrete ground magnetic anomalies and supported by a continuous Ni-Cr-As-Au geochemical signature.
The maiden RC drill programme focused on the FLEM conductor plate located in the north-western part of the Prospect area. The plate is 150m long, strikes north-east and dips 60⁰ to the north-west, extending to 300m below surface.
To-date the company has completed 11 drill holes for 1,494m as part of the maiden drill program at Tigre. Drilling has returned multiple intersections of biotite-magnetite alteration with significant percentages of sulphide mineralisation up to 10m thick.
Sulphides have been identified in all Tigre drill holes completed to-date. On-site scans of the RC chips with a hand-held XRF (Olympus Vanta) have confirmed high nickel grades in the main sulphide mineralisation intersections at Tigre. The sulphide intersections from the initial drilling correlate very well with the FLEM plate.
Two RC holes were recently completed at the western limit of the Tigre Prospect area on section 472140mE. Importantly, these holes also intersected up to 9.0m of nickel sulphide mineralisation associated with magnetite. The FLEM survey did not extend to this section and, as such, no associated conductor plates were previously identified.
A diamond rig was quickly mobilised to the Tigre Prospect and the first hole has intersected a 5.8m zone of stringer and net-textured nickel sulphides. The mineralisation is associated with biotite-magnetite hydrothermal alteration within the mylonitised porphyryitic dacite at the contact with the basement gneiss.
For further information please visit: https://www.centaurus.com.au
