KNI releases upgraded European Nickel-Copper Resource

Today, our EU critical minerals Investment Kuniko (ASX: KNI) released an updated mineral resource estimate (MRE) at its Ertelien project in Norway.

The mineral resource is the product of successful drilling at the project, which grew the resource to a total resource of 40 Mt at 0.25% nickel equivalent, including both Indicated and Inferred categories.

Importantly though, this resource upgrade was from only a small section of the wider Ringerike Battery Metals District, which KNI says shares similarities with the massive Voisey’s Bay nickel project in Canada:

KNI is working with a large 20km mineralised trend, which recently threw up some great drill ready targets:

Read more about KNI’s ongoing exploration efforts in the below Quick Take:

KNI defining massive sulphide targets for the EU

This is the resource by the numbers:

(Source)

That’s contained metals of 71Kt nickel (Ni), 49Kt copper (Cu) and 5.6kt Cobalt (Co)

divided between 39Kt Ni, 29Kt Cu and 3.1Kt Co and 32Kt Ni, 21Kt of Cu and 2.5Kt of Co in

indicated and inferred resources respectively.

That is a decent sized resource, which has some specific benefits given the EU is working hard to improve its critical minerals supply chain following the passage of the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA).

We note that the EU is STILL sourcing 19% of its nickel imports from Russia in Q3 of this year

(Source)

We remain Invested in KNI to see it help address the EU’s critical minerals supply chain problems.

Here’s what we want to see from KNI going forward…

What’s next for KNI?

With this updated resource estimate, we expect Kuniko to focus on:

🔄Further exploration to expand the resource - it remains open at depth and along strike.

🔄Advancing the project towards economic studies - this will give us a better idea of how KNI can monetise the project.

🔄Continuing exploration in the broader Ringerike Battery Metals District - this is the most intriguing aspect of KNI’s work for us. KNI’s project in Norway is massive and recent EM surveys have turned up some promising conductors which correlate well with sampling program results. If KNI can make further discoveries within the project, we think KNI has a good chance to re-rate as its cap structure remains relatively tight.

Read more about these conductors in our most recent KNI note:

KNI: EM conductors light up - the hunt for high grades at Ertelien begins

🔄Further engagement with potential off-takers and strategic partners - KNI already has major carmaker Stellantis on the register and we want to see further progress on this front.