media keep printing nia up!!!

Minews Story Date: April 27, 2006

Niagara Mining Puts Poseidon’s Mt Windarra Nickel Mine On World Metal Map Again.

By Our Man In Oz

With spot nickel touching US$20,000 a tonne it was inevitable that Australia’s most famous, or perhaps infamous, nickel mine should be making a grand return. And that’s just what is likely to happen over the next few days as drilling reaches the target depth at Mt Windarra, the discovery that put Poseidon on the world metals map in 1969, triggering Australia’s first nickel boom. Niagara Mining became the latest owner of Mt Windarra late last year, purchasing it for A$7 million from BHP Billiton. Wasting no time in its efforts to catch the nickel-price tide before it turns, Niagara’s executive chairman, Doug Daws, says three possible sources of nickel have been identified. Some is in the waste material left behind when Western Mining Corporation last worked the project. It may be suitable for heap-leaching. Some is in depth extensions of the original orebody, and some in new targets identified by Niagara geologists using the latest electromagnetic tools which have been a significant factor in finding high-grade ore pods in other nickel-rich regions.

“It’s going very well,” is the low-key response from Daws when Minesite tracked him down to his office in Kalgoorlie. “The drill crew was on the ‘phone this morning (Wednesday) saying they’d made better progress than expected. It looks like we just passed through a shear zone, but whether it’s what we’re looking for we’ll have to wait for the geologists to report.” For Daws, the return to Windarra is like a trip back in time. As a long-term staff member, and former chief draftsman for WMC, Daws worked at Windarra, and played a role in the discovery of Kambalda and WMC’s other great mineral discovery, Roxby Downs in South Australia – and yes, he still calls it Roxby even though the correct name is now Olympic Dam.

“We’re getting about 30metres a day and should have a report from site well before the end of the week,” Daws said of the current work at Mt Windarra which is testing one of the new targets which lies about 250metres from the old workings. The application of the old and the new are playing a key role in Niagara’s efforts to re-open Mt Windarra. “This particular hole is from the use of TEM (electromagnetic),” he said. “What happened is we had two scientific groups tell us they’re the best in the world. So we said here are four areas, go and do some trials. What happened is that essentially they found the same thing. We’ve dubbed this one the Poseidon target.

“But then we had an absolute windfall. We found some old WMC geological core in the Joe Lord core library in Kalgoorlie. We borrowed a piece of the high-grade nickel material and the whiz kids ran some testing, put that into a computer, and effectively created a template. They’ve modelled this information and one of them said to me this thing must bloody-well outcrop. Then he went out and found it under a sand dune.”

Stories like this from Daws are a sign of the excitement building again in the WA nickel hunt. It is by no means a guarantee that Mt Windarra is about to spring back into life, but it is a sign that high metal prices do wonders for exploration projects, Australian investors have been running hot and cold over Niagara’s work. The stock went for a sharp upward run from A22 cents to A59 cents over the final two week of March after reporting a 9.82 metre drill-core intersection assaying a very attractive 6.06 per cent nickel from a depth of 686metres. In hindsight, that is really what should have been intersected because that was the main Windarra orebody depth extension. Niagara was doing little more than proving what WMC knew when it abandoned the mine in 1991. The market seems to have sensed its premature excitement, marking Niagara back down to A35 cents by April 18, and then back up again today to A47 cents as the latest drilling nears its target.

Interesting as the deep drilling may be, possibly revealing commercial grade material at current prices, the real interest is in the potential to get quicker cash flow from the waste material which grades around 1 per cent nickel, and from what looks like the potential for new discoveries of rich pods similar to that mined by Jubilee Mines at its Cosmos project. “The first hole we drilled was into the known high-grade material under the old mine,” Daws said. “We were only reconfirming what WMC knew in 1977. We’re now using the electromagnetic tools to tell us where the core of that high-grade material can be found. This one we’re drilling right now is essentially a new target just 250metres from the old workings.”

The third potential winner for Niagara, the old waste rock at an area dubbed South Windarra, is being tested in a Perth laboratory. “That work is underway, and I’ve got to tell you the results are not too bad,” Daws said. He declined to reveal how good, but sources close to the laboratory say recoveries are averaging around 60 per cent, which translates into an above-ground “orebody” of several million tonnes of rock from which 0.6 per cent nickel might be recovered. “We’re pretty excited about that as potentially low cost, quick cash flow project, that can get nickel into a high-priced nickel market,” Daws said.

Listening to Daws is a blast from the past. At 63 years-old, and with a lifetime in the nickel industry he knows that the nickel market comes, and the nickel market goes. He lived through the original Windarra discovery, and will be pinching himself every morning as he relives his second Poseidon adventure – complete with daily reports from the drill crew. All we need is a campsite cook to act as the source of information and we really will have taken a trip back in time as we wait for Windarra drill core assays.


Companies featured in this Story
Jubilee Mines NL (ASX-JBM)

Go the NIA!