The 100% owned Nimbus Ag-Zn-Pb-Au deposit is located 15 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia within the Kalgoorlie Terrane, near the margin with the Kurnalpi Terrane. Nimbus is bounded by northwest trending shear zones, namely the Kanowna Shear Zone to the east and the Boorara Shear Zone to the west.
Nimbus is a shallow-water and low-temperature volcanic hosted massive sulphide (VHMS) deposit with epithermal characteristics (i.e. a hybrid bimodal felsic deposit), which is consistent with its position near the margin of the Kalgoorlie Terrane.
The local stratigraphy comprises a northwest-trending and steeply-dipping bimodal-felsic package of volcanic rocks (i.e. quartz-feldspar porphyritic dacite and lesser basalt, plus their autoclastic equivalents) with subordinate carbonaceous mudstone, tuff, polymict conglomerates and volcanic breccias. Komatiite flows, volcanic sandstones/siltstones, carbonaceous mudstone, basalt and dolerite were intersected in a distal drillhole (Hollis 2015).
Nimbus primary sulfide resources occur as a series of stacked plunging lenses, overlying mined supergene and oxide mineralisation. Silver production from the Discovery and East pit produced 3.6 million ounces of silver.
In the primary sulfide zone, early well-developed massive pyrite is underlain by:
- semi-massive, stringer and breccia-type Ag-Zn±Pb (Cu-Au) sulfides associated with the autoclastic facies of thick units of dacite; and
- stringer and disseminated sulfides (dominated by pyrite and sphalerite) in coherent pseudo-brecciated dacite at depth. Hydrothermal alteration is characterised by intense and pervasive quartz-sericite-carbonate±Cr-V mica, with chlorite predominantly associated with mafic units (Hollis, 2015).
The current Mineral Resource Estimate of Nimbus (JORC 2012) is:
12.1 million tonnes at 52 g/t silver, 0.2 g/t gold and 0.9% zinc containing 20.2 million oz of silver, 78,000 oz of gold and 104,000 tonnes of zinc
using lower cut-off grades of 12 ppm for Ag, 0.5% for Zn and 0.3 g/t for Au over a 2 metre down hole composite.
Within this global resource, the Nimbus project has a high grade silver zinc resource of:
255,898 tonnes @ 773 g/t Ag and 13% Zn
that has been estimated using a higher modelling cut-off grade of 500 g/t Ag and a top cut grade of 2,800 g/t Ag.
Technical review and a concept study confirms the potential of mining higher-grade lenses and generating a silver and zinc concentrate with interest received from potential offtakers. In addition, the concept study also includes an assessment of refractory gold ore that can be concentrated such as the from Teal deeps. Additional drilling is required to increase overall tonnage to feed the proposed conceptual plant.
An Exploration target has been defined at depth for 550-700kt Ag-Pb-Zn grading 3.4-3.6% Zn, 140-210g/t Ag and minor Pb, with drilling planned for September and December Quarters 2022.
