@justchilln5 - Announcement 8th Jan 2019 shows the EM for the...

@justchilln5 - Announcement 8th Jan 2019 shows the EM for the area, and they put 3 diamonds in but came up with sulphides but no noticable nickel. The aim now is to test with their updated hypothesis on the area. I'll come back to that...

So in the meantime... I've had another read of the release and I've done plenty of other reading. Caveat being that I'm no geologist or chemist and I'm definitely about to tread on some toes here, but I'll share the thinking. Will try to structure this in a helpful way....

OBJECTIVE

• G88 has embarked on beneficiation of the Quicksilver deposit to understand if there is the potential for Direct Shipped Ore (DSO) of its resource.
• The resource is 26.3 Mt @ 0.64% Ni & 0.04% Co (cut-off grade >0.5% Ni or >0.05% Co). Potential for DSO is there despite this being an oxide resource, because it's a cheap body to dig in the oxide clays above the hard rock layer.
• However, excitement grew as we find that that's a) high grade scandium, b) REE (pending assays and whether or not they're ionic, due end Aug) and c) in June we saw a 28m for 2.34% Nickel hit and realised that the DSO dream might be alive, as this is economical nickel even in oxide

LEARNINGS FROM TUESDAY'S RELEASE

1. We CAN enhance the Nickel content by 2-3 fold, using the bulk drilled sample. This means that the DSO dream is looking more viable, whilst other work needs to take place before any industry review of products and a scoping study. Now, being able to 2-3x your nickel and reduce ore mass by 26-64% is AWESOME. It means you could get 1.5% nickel across the 26Mt, mine it for <$10/tn and sell for a healthy margin to someone who's equipped to do the hard and dirty work. Quick money, solid gains
2. MORE IMPORTANTLY.... the Nickel isn't spread ubiquitously across the ore body components. This is the bit I want to focus on....

HIGH GRADE NICKEL
The announcement highlights that there appears to be an association of the higher grade nickel component in the mica / vermiculite. Doing a bit of reading and finding a couple of scientific papers here and here, there appears to be *some* precedent for metal ions to associate themselves within the ionic layers of mica. However, as G88 say, Quicksilver really does seem to be an anomaly.

One of those papers talks about an ore body called Santa Olalla in Spain that sounds like it has some similarities to here... nickel, vermiculite, mica. Interestingly, the recent release showed 1.9% aluminium and 1.1% manganese in the magnetic concentrate with 0.68% Ni... the paper above showed that after their multi-step purification they got to about 15% of each of Al / Mn / Ni.... so are there similar properties here?

The interesting question is then.... where is the mica in the ore body? I've scoured all the previous releases and I can't find visuals anywhere. The JORC was all RC drilling, and the historical diamond holes and the more recent PQ holes haven't shown any logging of visuals or the photos, so we will have to wait for news from the company.

One thing is for sure.... the mica sounds like it's worth chasing - that's either through the beneficiation processes which seems to be finding it in a cheap and easy <1mm scrubbing, or (and hopefully) it's layered in the deposit.... if that's the case, not only will it be far easier to access and pass into a more successful beneficiation process, but it would also mean that the grades of the mica would be far higher...

WHERE'S IT FROM?
Well, that's the target of the current diamond drilling round. Previous 3 holes showed no real nickel, so:
a) it was never in the basal layer in the first place.... seems very unlikely
b) it came up from there. Very possible - and if the team makes steps forward on the above and proves mica to be the key, this is a great outcome
c) it's still under there. Bonanza... we've a DSO worthy resource and a whole new one underneath!

WHAT ELSE IS GOOD?
This is just the nickel... the papers seem to suggest that various metals associate with Mica. Is the Scandium here? Are the REE here? Who knows. That's probably asking for too many stars to align, but hopefully we'll know at the end of the month


Watch this space

@Giovanni33 one to cast your eye over, @Wack too - not your usual cup of tea. But interesting