Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with Nimy Resources (ASX:NIM) Managing Director, Luke Hampson
Lel Smits: Nimy Resources has just announced it’s started a drilling program targeting a maiden gallium resource. The company is fast-tracking exploration efforts after recently unveiling a high-grade gallium discovery at its Block III prospect in Western Australia. Joining me today from Nimi Resources is its Managing Director, Luke Hampson. Luke, welcome back to the Stock Network.
Luke Hampson: Thanks, Lel, it’s good to be here.
Lel Smits: Now, the drilling you’ve just started is aimed at testing the Block III gallium exploration target defined in January this year. Can you talk us through your plans and also what happens next?
Luke Hampson: Yeah, thanks, Lel. Yeah, the drilling has started this morning and there’s a two-phase drilling program going on now, I think 13 holes in the first and 12 in the second. What we’re looking there, we put out an exploration target in January.
So it’s to infill and then extend that target. So we’re looking predominantly at drilling north, south and out to the east from memory. And we’re looking for the high-grade gallium.
So we’re looking for a chloride-sheared high-grade gallium contained within. And this all feeds into, you know, building towards having a JORC resource.
Lel Smits: Brilliant and Nimy is, of course, focused, as you mentioned, on defining this world-class JORC-compliant high-grade gallium deposit. What does the year ahead look like in terms of catalysts?
Luke Hampson: Yeah, okay. So this bit of drilling, if you like, this campaign is really important because then we think we can extend the resource that we put out, as I said, in January, or the target at least. In conjunction with that, we are working with Curtin and CSIRO. CSIRO delivered the first bit of work around identifying the high-grade post-rock, if you like, being a chloride schist, which is very promising. And at the same time, Curtin have received some of the sampling from the earlier drilling, and they’re looking at the metallurgy.
And that work will go through metallurgy extraction process all the way through to a flow sheet. So we’re starting to move pretty rapidly, actually, along the curve, if you like, to try and get this in a position where you can assess it commercially in terms of a decision to mine. And the reason we’re doing that, to a large degree, is that we have a fairly strong belief that the gallium market is not only going to stand up, it’s going to expand.
And we want to be an early mover, meet that demand as it comes through and to a large degree, we are fairly unique in as much as we’re looking at a stand-alone gallium deposit, other than the by-product production that’s going on at the moment.
Lel Smits: Well, thank you so much for the update. Congratulations on the commencement, and look forward to the catalysts in the months ahead.
Luke Hampson: Thank you, Lel. Thank you.
Ends