Rockcliff Metals (CSE: RCLF) has announced a new high-grade nickel-PGE discovery at its wholly-owned Tower property, 600 metres south of the company's high grade, copper-rich Tower deposit and 130 km from Wabowden in central Manitoba.
Drilling at the property was conducted in the winter of 2019-2020, with drill hole 20-002 intersecting 2 metres grading 2.53% nickel, 3.08 grams palladium per tonne and 1.04 grams platinum per tonne (3.82% nickel equivalent) starting from 245 metres downhole.
The drill hole also returned a higher-grade core of 1 metre of 4.46% nickel, 5.61 grams palladium per tonne and 1.87 grams platinum per tonne (6.79% nickel equivalent).
"We were trying to discover the southern extent of the Tower copper deposit in 2019, and downhole geophysics was suggesting that there wasn't much conductivity to the south," explains Alistair Ross, the company's CEO, in a telephone interview. "But we decided to drop some holds, and low and behold the last hole of our winter drilling program returned this anomaly."
The hole, says Ross, was designed to test the centre of a large electromagnetic geophysical anomaly of 400 metres by 350 metres, with additional geophysical surveys to be conducted to determine the relationship between the high-grade interval and the geophysical anomaly.
Buoyed by the find, the company sank several more drill holes and discovered that the narrow-veined, steeply dipping ore body at the southern end of the Tower copper deposit suddenly became much thicker, says Ross. The drilling at the south end of the Tower copper deposit with the thicker intercepts provided the company with the ammunition to step out over 700 metres south to test the Tower south Anomaly, which is where the nickel-PGE discovery is now located.
"We were stunned to find the 2.5% nickel, and to find over three grams of palladium and over a gram of platinum is very significant," says Ross.
It also became clear, he says, that they had left the Fin Flon-Snow Lake Greenstone Belt, which hosts the Tower copper deposit, and had entered the Thompson Nickel Belt, a world-class, 300 km long mining belt that has been producing high-grade nickel and associated copper and cobalt over the last 60 years.
Next, Rockcliff plans to explore the potential enrichment of mineralization in the interface between the two rock formations and to test the extent of the southern part of the Tower copper deposit.
The company also intends to complete a preliminary economic assessment for the Tower copper deposit towards the end of 2020, which could potentially slip into the early part of 2021 due to the coronavirus outbreak.
At press time in Toronto, Rockcliff Metals was trading at 7 ? per share within a 52-week trading range of 4 ? and 19 ?.
The company has 306 million common shares outstanding for a $21.49-million market capitalization.