Leeuwin Metals Ltd (ASX:LM1), a battery metals exploration company with projects in North America and Western Australia, has formed a technical committee with mining major Glencore PLC (LSE:LON:GLEN).
This has been convened to advance its flagship William Lake Nickel Project in Manitoba, Canada. Glencore invested C$1.3mln into, and as a result owns 9.97% of, Leeuwin Metals.
World-class potential
The William Lake Nickel Project is situated in the world-class Thompson Nickel Belt and has seen 89,500 meters of drilling over 152 holes, with an estimated historic exploration spend of C$35mln.
Mineralisation has been defined over a 12-kilometre (km) strike length (Figure 1), and Leeuwin Metals' focus is on defining the higher-grade zones within the orebodies and has utilized advances in downhole EM and geophysical processing to target these areas.
Recent surface-based fixed loop electromagnetic geophysics identified a high-priority conductor at the W22 Target (NYSE:TGT) for future drilling.
Platinum group elements
Furthermore, the company has re-assayed some of the historic core for platinum group elements (PGE), identifying significant widths of previously unrecognised mineralisation with individual assays up to 6.58 G/t PGE.
Leeuwin Metals is planning to commence its initial drill programme at the William Lake Project in the second quarter of 2023.
Jenpeg also ready to advance
The company is also advancing its Jenpeg Lithium Project, which is also located in Manitoba, Canada. Jenpeg was previously explored for tin-tantalum deposits, but a re-assay of some of the previous drilling has demonstrated the presence of spodumene mineralisation.
To date, initial reconnaissance exploration has defined lithium mineralisation over a strike of 3.6 km. The company plans to continue surface sampling and mapping in the summer, with the aim of generating drill targets for testing in Q1 2024.
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