Todd River Resources has re-commenced RC drilling at its Berkshire Valley nickel, copper and platinum group elements project following the recent Christmas break to chase up some sulphide occurrences and previously identified geochemical nickel-copper-PGE anomalies. Additionally, a moving loop electromagnetic survey is set to commence next week targeting conductors at depth in a newly identified area in the far north of the Berkshire Valley project.
The nickel-copper-platinum group element mineralisation at its 100 per cent owned Berkshire Valley project sits approximately 100 kilometres north of Chalice Mining’s humungous Julimar discovery in Western Australia.
Chalice’s Julimar project, boasts a resource of 330 million tonnes grading 0.58 per cent nickel equivalent and 1.6 g/t palladium equivalent. The company enjoyed a skyrocketing share price from under 20c in March 2020 to peak above $10 following the discovery and resource drill out.
Todd River’s planned RC drilling at Berkshire Valley is a continuation of the December 2021 drill program. It will focus on deeper RC drilling of areas that intersected sulphides in previous shallow reconnaissance aircore drilling or where anomalous soil geochemistry results have been identified.
Drilling will start at the Mako prospect where numerous shallow reconnaissance aircore holes encountered sulphides.
The average drill depth across the RC program will be approximately 150 metres with the expected duration of the program between three to four weeks.
Three metre composites will be taken throughout the proposed drilling with individual one metre splits re-sampled where the handheld XRF picks up anomalous readings or if visual sulphides are present in the chips.
Results from a recent aircore drilling program completed at Berkshire Valley before Christmas are expected to return from the lab late this month. The aircore drilling aimed to follow up multiple elevated platinum and palladium levels identified in shallow geochemical auger drilling at the ‘Eastern Trend’ prospect area within the Berkshire Valley project.
The geochemical auger anomalies extend the strike of the Eastern Trend to more than seven kilometres in length and outlined two distinct target areas that were the primary focus of the aircore drilling.
Aircore drill samples underwent a full suite of base and precious metals assays aimed at identifying any areas of anomalism that will contribute to the wider understanding of the intrusion related mafic-ultramafic system.
Todd River Resources Managing Director, Will Dix said:
“We are delighted to continue the drilling program at Berkshire Valley with the focus significantly shifting to deeper drilling following the successful reconnaissance program drilled late last year. To be able to progress quickly with the Moving Loop survey while the rig is on site gives us some flexibility with the work program and the ability to quickly take advantage of anything significant we identify.”
“This is another exciting phase of exploration for the company, we are well funded to carry out our exploration activities and look forward to sharing the results with shareholders as soon as they are received.”
Chalice’s whopping Julimar discovery is one of the most significant in recent years and sits just 100 clicks down the road from Todd River’s Berkshire Valley. The suite of rocks at both show some distinct similarities and Todd River will no doubt be itching to get the RC rig hammering away at its prospective tenure to see if it can achieve a similar result.
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By Matt Birney
