Ann: Significant Massive Nickel Sulphide Discovery at Carr Boyd, page-462

Le Page picked ESR as early as August this year

Hot stocks to watch

Le Page’s two new hot picks for this week have projects in a nickel fertile region of Western Australia.

His first pick, Poseidon Nickel (ASXOS), has been around for 12 years and is headed by Peter Harold, the former managing director of nickel producer Panoramic Resources (ASXAN).
“They’ve got just under 400,000 tonnes of contained nickel,” Le Page said.
“They’ve got Lake Johnston and Windarra, but probably more interesting in recent days have been the results they’ve got from Black Swan.
“It’s got a 2.2-million-tonne processing plant, around 16,000 tonnes of contained nickel at about 9.5 per cent, so very high grade.”
Poseidon announced this week it had hit high-grade massive sulphide mineralisation at its Golden Swan deposit, which sits adjacent to its Black Swan prospect.
“You’ve obviously got Silver Swan next door to it which was mined quite deep and is very high-grade,” Le Page said.
“You’ve got the disseminated body just to the north of it. But to the south is where they’ve been targeting this massive sulphide.”
The first hole drilled into Golden Swan in March this year returned a hit of 23m (13.3m true width) at 4 per cent nickel and 0.4 per cent copper, including 7m (4.3m true width) at 8.8 per cent nickel.
Le Page said that was a “phenomenal result”.
This week Poseidon reported a second hit of 9m (4.5m true width) at 10.46 per cent nickel, including 4.6m (2.3m true width) at 13.8 per cent nickel, on the basal contact.
“This looks like they could have a repeat of Silver Swan. So very bullish,” Le Page said.
“It’s got a market cap of about $120m. A pretty experienced team on board, so I think that’s definitely one to watch over the next six months and as we move into the recovery in base metals.”


Next up is Estrella Resources (ASX:ESR), which has nickel projects further to the north of Poseidon.
The company picked up an unloved project called Carr Boyd, north of Kalgoorlie, back in 2017. It was a past producing mine that was discovered in the late 1960s and mined by Great Boulder Mines and WMC from the early to late 70s.
“It had a lot of different owners who have really not sort of done the project justice,” Le Page noted.
Carr Boyd is similar geology to Nova-Bollinger in the Fraser Range, the famous discovery that rocketed explorer Sirius Resources from penny stock to $1.8bn takeover target in just three years.
“It’s a layered intrusion, similar to Nova-Bollinger but a different age. It’s Archean rather than Proterozoic,” Le Page explained.
“Estrella has only been working on this since 2017, but had some pretty encouraging reverse circulation drill results.
“Historical production was around about 200,000 tonnes at just under 1.5 per cent nickel and 0.5 per cent copper.”
Modern geophysics or any meaningful exploration has been practically non-existent for over 20 years, according to Le Page.
The focus for Estrella is the promising T5 target, where the company hit 11m of a mineralised basal contact zone.
Estrella has so far drilled four holes that returned hits such as 8m at 1.11 per cent nickel and 0.36 per cent copper, including 4m at 1.6 per cent nickel and 0.31 per cent copper, and 1m at 0.61 per cent nickel and 0.57 per cent copper.
The mineralisation extends over 400m strike and is open to the north, south and at depth.
“Where you’ve got an EM (electromagnetic) conductor and those sort of assays at surface I think that’s pretty encouraging,” Le Page said.
Estrella has a market cap of just under $10m at its current share price of 1.5c. Le Page places its enterprise value (market cap + debt – cash) at around $9m.