Nickel more valuable than a dime

Strong nickel prices and growing demand for battery metals is contributing to a growing exploration rush in mineral rich provinces that haven’t yet reached their full potential.

This indeed is the story of the Fraser Range. The whispers are getting louder that the province’s secrets haven’t been exposed and the hunt is gaining stronger momentum among the players holding tenements in the region.

IGO has certainly got the largest footprint in the region having recently gained rights to explore nine of Boadicea’s tenements with strong sights set on Symons Hill to unlock at least one of the secrets of the Fraser Range.

Meanwhile fellow Fraser Range explorer Mark Creasey and his personally backed Galileo is making news with his ‘boots on the ground’ approach at its projects in the Fraser Range.

And who would blame all these explorers for taking a punt on trying to unlock the Fraser Range secrets with nickel prices topping $US18,000/t.

Galileo’s tenements are located in the southern portion of the Fraser Range where Boadicea is also the keeper of two solely-held tenements – Fraser South and Southern Hills which it too has begun to conduct some early exploration work to test the ground for any signs and potential for mineralisation.

Boadicea undertook a strategy in the past two years of growing its footprint in the Fraser Range which bode well in the last six months for its shareholders, as the attractiveness of Boadicea’s tenements allowed the company cut a $57 million deal with IGO to explore nine of its 11 tenements.

Comparisons – Boadicea and other juniors – Fraser Range and Thompson Belt

Galileo Mining is a $39 million nickel explorer while Boadicea is an $11 million nickel-copper-gold explorer holding tenements in three very prospective mineralised districts – Fraser Range, Paterson Province and Charters Towers Province.

There is no doubt the Fraser Range is a very hot nickel address and Galileo, like Boadicea has a number of high value nickel targets in this province.

Mark Creasy has history here – he led the discovery by Sirius Resources in 2012 of the $1.8 billion nickel discovery.

The Fraser Range has only two deposits with more than 150km strike length, and total known resources of 18 million tonnes.

Taking a look at the Thompson Belt in Canada, there are 10 deposits and total known resources of more than 146 million tonnes which occur over a similar strike length.

The Canadian belt is now quite mature with more than 50 years of mining and exploration, meanwhile the Fraser Range has only eight years of mining history.

Everyone within the inner circle who know nickel and even those standing on the sidelines, know the Fraser Range is bound to hold more multi-billion dollar nickel deposits … it’s just a question who is going to find the next one.

The team at Boadicea is hopeful and confident that with IGO’s expertise, it will be the next big find.

Meanwhile at Galileo, Mark Creasy, who owns 26% of the company is hopeful of making his third find in the area. IGO, Boadicea’s partners also owns 8.9% of Galileo.

After the Nova find, Creasy still kept quite a significant landholding in the Fraser Range and the punters have it that he kept some of the best til last – which as stated earlier, some of which is located near Boadicea’s Fraser South and Southern Hills licences.

Nickel is going to be more valuable than dimes

The price of nickel is incredibly attractive at the moment with no signs of abating. In fact, way higher than anyone this time last year would have forecast nudging and breaching $18,000/tonne.

The price is being super-charged by battery makers chasing the metal.

Battery and electric vehicle king, Elon Musk has urged miners to produce more nickel. This will certainly help his empire to make more electric car batteries and drive the growth of electric car sales.

Nickel is an essential battery metal because it makes them more dense so cars can run for a longer time and distance on a single charge.

Boadicea and fellow nickel explorers in the Fraser Range are well-placed to benefit from the massive surge in investor demand and hence more keen than ever to sink money into exploration and be in the right place at the right time to make the next nickel discovery.

This article was written by mining stocks investor and publicist Yolanda Torrisi. Yolanda has been involved in the mining sector for more than 25 years covering numerous ASX-listed stocks. She manages investor relations and communications for Boadicea Resources.