Laverton Project

Laverton Geology & EM Survey Size: 268 kb Width: 0 px Height: 0 px

Location and Tenements

The Laverton Project tenements cover an extensive area around the town of Laverton in the north-eastern part of the Archaean Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia. Magma owns 100% of the Ni-Cu-PGM rights in the tenements. 

The project contains a number of strike-extensive ultramafic units, many of which are interpreted to be komatiites, prospective for nickel sulphide mineralization. The historic Windarra and South Windarra nickel mines occur immediately adjacent and to the northwest of the project area at the base of the Windarra Ultramafic Unit. At least two of the main komatiite units within the project, the Red Flag Ultramafic Unit and Lancefield Ultramafic Unit, are adjacent to, and within the same part of the greenstone sequence as, the Windarra Ultramafic Unit. These prospective komatiites, which have a combined strike length of approximately 60km, are mostly covered by transported regolith and have not been systematically explored for nickel; they are the main focus of the exploration program on this project.

Geology, Exploration History and Targets

The Mount Windarra nickel deposit was discovered by Poseidon NL in 1969 by surface prospecting during a boom in nickel exploration in Australia in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. The South Windarra deposit was discovered in 1971 beneath transported overburden by a consortium of Union Oil, Australian Hanna and Homestake by drill testing a magnetic anomaly. Western Mining Corporation Ltd subsequently mined the deposits between 1974-78 and 1981-91 and extracted approximately 7.2Mt at 1.6% Ni for 85,000t of nickel recovered. Ultramafic volcanic and intrusive rocks are abundant within the greenstone sequence in the Laverton area and are highly prospective for nickel deposits; however, they are largely covered and their extents are interpreted from aeromagnetic data and previous mainly shallow drilling. 

Most of the previous exploration for nickel on the tenements was undertaken in the nickel boom of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s which identified several promising prospects. The effectiveness of much of this work was constrained by relatively primitive exploration technology, limited knowledge of komatiite-hosted nickel sulphide mineralization and regolith geology combined with poor rock exposure and deep weathering. The opportunity in this project is to apply modern exploration knowledge and technology to the known prospects and the large strike extents of these ultramafic units about which little is known. 

The Red Flag and Lancefield units have a combined strike length of approximately 60km within the project area, most of which lies beneath sand plain and salt lake sediment cover. The units have been interpreted as thrust-fault repeated equivalents of the Windarra Ultramafic Unit or alternatively different flows within the same stratigraphic sequence. Whichever interpretation is correct, the prospectivity of the units for discovery of nickel sulphide deposits is based on their komatiite lithology and the presence of a favourable sulphidic sedimentary substrate over parts of their strike extents.  

A major LANDTEM geophysical survey has been completed to map the distribution of electro-magnetic conductors, potentially reflecting nickel-sulphide mineralization, over the 60km cumulative strike length of the Red Flag and Lancefield ultramafic units to a depth of approximately 300m. Several conductors were identified from this survey. Prioritization and drill testing of these targets is ongoing.

This section was last updated on 16 July 2010. For more recent information, please refer to the "Investor Information" section.