Further rhodium mineralisation at Callisto
Galileo Mining (ASX:GAL) this morning announced that assays from drilling at its Callisto PGE discovery in WA revealed consistent rhodium grades.
The assays reported today are from the first four drill holes of the second RC program at Callisto and have returned consistent rhodium grades over the previously reported mineralised intervals.
GAL has now confirmed rhodium mineralisation across all drill holes analysed to date.
This is significant as rhodium is now priced at ~US$14,700 per ounce (~$A745 per gram) — so the occurrence of rhodium at Callisto has potential to add significant value to the overall project.
Rhodium is a very rare metal, almost always produced as a by-product of platinum, palladium, copper, or nickel mining. It is predominantly used in automotive catalysts for pollution control, as well as jewellery.
The last time GAL reported rhodium mineralisation assays we noted how the deposit was shaping up against the Platreef PGE deposits in South Africa.
Brad touched on this in today’s announcement mentioning that GAL’s Callisto discovery has the same disseminated sulphide style as seen at Platreef.
For some context, GAL’s assays returned rhodium grades of ~0.03-0.06g/t, while the Platreef deposit’s resource has rhodium grades of ~0.07g/t, both using a 1g/t cut off.
The key difference between the two is the depth of mineralisation. GAL’s discovery starts from a depth of ~110m, whereas the Platreef deposits starts from ~500m and extend to depths of up to 1,200m.
Here are updated major drill intercepts, now including rhodium in 4E calculation where available (4E = palladium + platinum + gold + rhodium):
It had already been a busy news week for GAL with today’s rhodium assays following an announcement on Tuesday of GAL’s planned 50-hole RC drilling program, followed by assay results on Wednesday. You can read more on those updates in our Note from yesterday.
Having only recently raised capital, GAL has $26.4 in the bank (as at 21 July) — plenty to further expand drilling as required.
With this cash balance and GAL’s more than five kilometres of prospective strike length, we can expect plenty more drilling ahead.
