Pulju Project
The Pulju Project represents a district-scale 240km2 land package in Finland’s Central Lapland Greenstone Belt.
Nordic Nickel’s tenements contain mafic-ultramafic lithologies analogous to Anglo American’s nearby world-class 44Mt Sakatti copper-nickel-PGE deposit, with historical drilling confirming the presence of widespread nickel sulphide mineralisation including a number of high nickel tenor massive sulphide veins.
Outokumpu drilled a total of 51 holes at Nordic’s granted Hotinvaara exploration licence in the 1980s and 1990s targeting large-scale, shallow open pit deposits. This vast, high-quality database only became available in 2021.
Outokumpu’s historical drilling was mostly shallow with no down-hole geophysics ever undertaken – opening up a significant opportunity for deeper discoveries.
Nordic has completed a maiden JORC (2012) Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for Hotinvaara based on the historical drilling for 133Mt at 0.21% Ni and 0.01% Co for 278,530tn Ni and 12,650tn Co. The Company has now also revised its estimated Exploration Target* to 275-415Mt at 0.17-0.25% Ni and 76-114ppm Co for 459,000-1,032,000 tonnes of contained nickel and 21,000-47,000 tonnes of contained cobalt.
Planning is underway for deeper drilling to test the potential for a large-scale, high-grade Sakatti-type discovery at depth which will commence in January 2023.
Historical drilling indicates strong similarities between the geological environment at Pulju and Sakatti, with accumulations of disseminated nickel found near surface at both locations, with massive sulphide intersections encountered amongst the disseminated nickel. These similarities mean that exploration strategies from Sakatti may also be successful at Pulju.
Down-hole EM (DHEM) was successfully used to track massive sulphides at Sakatti but has yet to be extensively undertaken at Pulju. Importantly, at least 24 historical drill-holes remain open for DHEM at Hotinvaara, with only three surveyed to date and the results on 14 more currently pending.
Two large FLEM loops were undertaken on the Hotinvaara licence in December 2021 with several large deep-seated conductors observed at about 400m, 800m and 1500m depth which corresponds very well with the depth of the large EM conductors detected at Sakatti. Geophysics will be an important exploration tool at Pulju.
* The potential quantity and grade of the Exploration Target is conceptual in nature. There has been insufficient exploration to estimate a Mineral Resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the estimation of a Mineral Resource.