Scandinavian Gold pulls mineralization at Keivitsa

Drilling by Scandinavian Gold (SGL-T) at the Keivitsa property in Arctic Finland has cut a long intersection of nickel-platinum-palladium mineralization near the centre of the known deposit.

The drill hole, the first in a 1,854-metre program to test pipe-like zones near the middle of the deposit, intersected 184 metres averaging 0.39% nickel, 0.46% copper, 0.43 gram platinum, 0.32 grams palladium and 0.19 gram gold per tonne, plus 0.02% cobalt. That included a 48-metre interval in the pipe body that contained 0.63% nickel, 0.33% copper, 0.01% cobalt, 0.81 gram platinum, 0.65 gram palladium and 0.2 gram gold per tonne.

The pipes represent one of the highest-grade targets on the Keivitsa intrusion, having returned grades in the range 0.7% to 1% nickel and platinum and palladium grades over 1 gram per tonne in previous drilling.

Another six holes are complete and Scandinavian expects to have assay results in the next six to eight weeks.

Recent metallurgical tests on Keivitsa mineralization showed that a two-stage flotation process (that is, rougher and cleaner circuits) produced a bulk concentrate that could be fed to a hydrometallurgical process such as pressure acid leaching, or to a smelter. The best result was a concentrate grading 6.1% copper, 4.4% nickel and 11.6 grams combined platinum, palladium and gold per tonne. That concentrate recovered 91% of the copper, 82% of the nickel and 67% of the precious metals in the test material.

The same run of tests also showed separate nickel and copper concentrates could be produced, and further tests on that approach are to start in March.

Scandinavian is exploring two mining scenarios at Keivitsa, which has an indicated resource of 150 million tonnes grading 0.18% nickel, 0.27% copper, 0.01% cobalt, 0.2 gram platinum, 0.1 gram palladium and 0.1 gram gold per tonne. A larger project, to mine the deposit at a rate of 15 million tonnes per year from an open pit and process a bulk concentrate using pressure acid leaching, is the subject of a pre-feasibility study. A smaller project to start mining only the higher-grade resource in the pipes is also under consideration.