Well, I'd have to say I'm pretty gobsmacked that in the face of...

Well, I'd have to say I'm pretty gobsmacked that in the face of so much positive news on our flagship Quicksilver Project, it's the naysayers like our resident Casandra, Trade4Profit88, who have triumphed in the short term.

Indeed, to the astonishing extent that our share price has been whacked to a Market Cap for the Company of just $6.6M.

This in the face of starting from the value point of a Resource at Quicksilver of 26.3Mt @ 0.64% Ni (168,500 contained metal tonnes nickel) & 0.04% Co (11,300 metal tonnes cobalt).

AND with significant Rare Earth Oxide and Scandium potential confirmed - currently the subject of further metallurgical interrogation.

One would think from the drift, the Project had begun hitting snags.

When in fact, plainly unheeded, the story has advanced rather encouragingly in recent months.

I think the big hint came from the Stage 3 Met which, incidentally, has itself been quietly coming up trumps!

So far it has confirmed:

- High-silica/low-nickel rejection from scrubbing & screening...which means industrial aggregrates (By-product 1) are dead easy to remove without losing nickel;

- Low Intensity Magnetic Separation (LIMS) pulls out a very handy magnetite product grading approximately 50% Fe, 10% Cr and 0.7% Ni (By-product 2), again with a positive effect on upgrading nickel in the non-magnetic stream;

Leading, best of all, to the net overall result:

- Simple, low-energy mechanical screening and scrubbing results in nickel upgrades in the range of 111% to 226%!

But, significantly, there's also this:

- There is a high-grade (2% to 3%) nickel association with vermiculite (mica mineral).

(All of this, of course, from a shallow, free-dig deposit.)

Now it's this last point that is so very interesting. Nickel grades of 2%-3% are high indeed, and high-grade nickel-rich vermiculite is rare.

In fact, there doesn't appear even to be a typology for this presumed hydrothermal-derived ionic nickel mineralisation with no laterite present.

It's not entirely unique - Vale's Onca and Puma nickel deposits in Brazil evidently share similar minerology to Quicksilver.

But it is rare, Quicksilver is definitely not a typical “laterite” deposit ...and it confers all sorts of economic advantages.

So before you throw any more shares to the wind (and at me ), ponder this:


Within the clay hosted nickel oxide Resource the Company believes there are high-grade nickel zones (2% to 3% nickel) that may potentially provide significant value uplift of the Quicksilver nickel-cobalt deposit. These zones comprise nickel bearing vermiculite (mica mineral), appear to be structurally controlled, and have the potential to utilise favourable metallurgical extraction.


- High-grade (2%-3%) Ni zones. Well, we caught one of those with the spectacular Intersections from Hole 8 (28m at 2.34% Nickel & 0.109% Cobalt within the Resource Outline, including intercepts of up to 4.14% Ni and 0.421% Co).

- Appear to be structurally controlled. Likely to be more of them - and wait ...have we begun to crack the code of where to look?

- Able to utilise favourable metallurgical extraction. Yep, don't need expensive HPAL for this stuff. Just chemically reverse the 'blotting paper' effect of the vermiculite with good old fashioned atmospheric acid/ammonia leach.


It's hard to comprehend the degree of misunderstanding that shareholders must have of what's being said here - because from where I'm sitting, all the fundamental indicators around Quicksilver have only been improving.

And point in one direction - up!