Todd River extends WA Berkshire East nickel-PGE target

Todd River Resources continues to grow its suite of nickel-copper-PGE targets in Western Australia’s South West Mineral Field, with the specialist explorer extending the Eastern Trend in the Berkshire Valley to over seven kilometres of strike. Shallow extensional auger drilling shows two distinct target areas along the mineralised trend, with platinum and palladium levels kicking at more than 10 times background levels associated with coincident copper and nickel anomalies.

The company’s Berkshire Valley tenure lies around 100 kilometres north of the revered Julimar discovery and whilst a host miners and explorers are now exploring the overlooked geology north of Perth, Todd River appears to be putting the runs on the board.

Recent exploration confirms the company’s extensive tenure near the wheatbelt town of Moora overlies not one but two trends hosting nickel-copper-PGE mineralisation.

Todd River’s initial work over the Berkshire tenure has focused on the 40km long Western mafic-ultramafic trend, where historical exploration unearthed highly anomalous nickel, copper and gold mineralisation. However, work in recent months has centred on the unexplored Eastern Trend with shallow auger drilling uncovering a 20km long trend typified by platinum, palladium, copper and nickel geochemistry. This anomalism is associated with a nest of intrusive ultramafic rocks similar in nature to those hosting the Julimar discovery.

The company’s initial work program was focused on the north of the Eastern Trend and has outlined two targets. The first is the northern anomaly which consists of a target zone close to 3km long. It has returned platinum and palladium levels that regularly top 20 parts per billion, or 10 to 15 times background levels. This anomalism weighs in at over 50 ppb in some areas which also show strong copper and nickel anomalism, pointing to the potential for a well-developed sulphide system at depth.

To put these results into perspective, the Gonneville discovery at Julimar also shows elevated levels of nickel and copper mineralisation whilst palladium results kicking at above 5ppb are considered worthy of drill testing.

In addition to the northern anomaly, Todd River has also begun to probe the southern extensions of the Eastern ultramafic trend, having already outlined anomalous nickel, copper and PGE mineralisation along more than 5km of strike with further work planned in the months ahead.

The company is now preparing to move into the next phase of exploration over the Eastern trend and has secured land access agreements over the region to allow ground-based moving loop electromagnetics to be completed and deeper drilling to commence over any potential sulphidic conductors lit up by the survey.

With a who’s who of the resource sector now exploring the South West mineral terrane in search of the next Julimar, Todd River appears to be rapidly moving its way through a well-credentialed field of competitors. The company now has two expansive nickel-copper-PGE trends in the bag in the Berkshire Valley and with geophysics and drilling set to kick off in the months ahead, it may well move ahead of the pack of Julimar hopefuls in the months ahead.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au