An area that Nickel X (ASX: NKL) Managing Director Matthew Gauci identified as a potential gold target 10 years ago is now providing significant excitement as a new Western Australian nickel, copper and platinum group elements play.

Located just 200 kilometres from Perth, Nickel X’s Dalwallinu project is now being aggressively explored by the company, with a suite of modern exploration technologies to further define the rich mineral potential Gauci and his experienced team – and other companies – believe is in the area.

‘Our Technical Director, Dr Oliver Kreuzer, and I were driving around and exploring this area about 10 years ago, looking for gold,’ Gauci says. ‘I just couldn’t believe how underexplored it was. The new exploration interest probably started to emerge last year with Chalice Mining and its Julimar discovery emerging and heading towards bankable feasibility study, and potentially towards production.’

Nickel X has identified the Barra Barra Greenstone Belt as a key exploration target, and now holds a significant 86 square kilometres of land there.

The company has wasted no time in bringing together the exploration expertise contained within its board and management, and that of key contractors, to investigate the exciting nickel potential of the Barra Barra Greenstone Belt.

In late 2022, the company contracted Sensorem to carry out a drone airborne magnetic survey over the entire Dalwallinu project tenement E70/5398. The survey was flown on 50-metre spaced lines and oriented east–west at a sensor height of 40 metres above ground. In all, 771 line‑kilometres of magnetic data was obtained over the project.

The company says the new magnetic data represents a far superior product to the previous regional magnetic data for target delineation on the project, and preliminary interpretation has highlighted four areas with anomalous metal values confirmed in auger geochemistry data.

These areas represent priority targets for follow-up exploration, as does investigation of the margins of the antiform folded magnetic body in the west of the project. Results from these four areas include 73.7 parts per billion of platinum and palladium, with a five-kilometre and 10 parts per billion of platinum and palladium north-south strike, and values to 466 parts per million of nickel and 843 parts per million of copper.

More recently, Gyro Australia was contracted in February to infill auger geochemical soil sampling over the four high-priority areas identified on a 50-metre-by-50-metre grid.

A month later, Wireline Services Group was contracted to complete moving loop electromagnetic surveys on traverses across the four priority target areas. In total, 140 receiver stations were read on nine lines using 200-metre-by-200-metre transmitter loops on 50-metre station spacing along the lines.

Nickel X is very well placed in what is now one of the hottest base metal exploration areas in Western Australia.