Future Metals NL announced its Panton project in Western Australia has upgraded its JORC 2012 Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE), and now is Australia’s second largest PMG deposit.
The JORC 2012 Mineral Resource Estimate (MRE) for the Panton PGM-Nickel Project was updated to five million ounces palladium, platinum and gold (PGM3E) and 238.8 tonnes nickel, which confirms the deposit to be of a global scale:
- 129 million tonnes at 1.20g/t PGM3E, 0.19 per cent nickel and 154ppm cobalt (1.66g/t palladium equivalent) containing five million ounces palladium, platinum and gold (PGM3E) and 238.8 tonnes nickel and 20,000 tonnes cobalt (6.9 million ounces palladium equivalent).
Following the resource update, Panton is now the second-largest platinum group metals (PGM) deposit in Australia, only surpassed by Chalice Mining’s Gonneville discovery.
Future Metals Managing Director and CEO, Jardee Kininmonth, said the resource upgrade demonstrates the potential for Panton to be a PGM-nickel project of global scale outside the primary supply jurisdictions of Russia and South Africa.
Importantly, the resource upgrade represents a 108 per cent increase in contained PGM3E while the contained nickel resource has increased by 526 per cent during the company’s 12 months of ownership of the Panton PGM-Ni Project.
Panton’s previous MRE, reported in May 2021, related entirely to the high-grade chromite reefs and did not include any of the mineralised dunite material which envelopes the reefs.
The mineralised dunite increases the width of the mineralisation significantly, allowing for the estimation of a bulk-tonnage MRE which supports assessment of potential open-pit mining scenarios, along with a high-grade operation.
“The inclusion of the mineralised envelope surrounding the chromite reefs has significantly increased Panton’s Resource and scale potential, growing contained ounces of PGM’s by over 100 per cent and increasing the contained nickel by over 500 per cent,” Mr Kininmonth.
