Hawk Resources Limited (ASX: HWK) has begun exploration work at its Olympus scandium project in Western Australia’s West Musgrave region, following the receipt of all necessary Traditional Owner and government approvals and the exercise of its option over the ground.
The company now holds an 80 per cent interest in the project and has moved directly into its first phase of fieldwork, a large-scale lag soil sampling programme designed to confirm, infill and extend a series of highly anomalous scandium zones identified in historical exploration data.
Managing Director of Hawk Resources, Scott Caithness, said the start of exploration marked an important step for the company.
“It is exciting to get exploration underway at Olympus where Hawk will be exploring for a major new scandium province,” he said.
The Olympus project has attracted attention because of a substantial scandium soil anomaly measuring roughly 7km by 4km, within which readings have exceeded 500 parts per million (ppm) scandium.
That anomaly was first outlined through lag soil sampling carried out in 2008, when the area was being explored for copper, nickel, cobalt and platinum group elements rather than scandium specifically.
Samples from that campaign were analysed using a handheld Niton pXRF analyser, a method that predates current JORC 2012 reporting standards but nonetheless flagged the zone as highly prospective.
Historical RAB drilling completed during the same era also returned encouraging results.
Two traverses, labelled A to B and E to F, recorded highly anomalous scandium intercepts from surface, including 11m at 934ppm scandium, 5m at 948ppm scandium and 6m at 821ppm scandium.
Individual one-metre RAB samples within these traverses returned values as high as 2,164ppm scandium.
Notably, neither of these drill traverses falls within the broader 4km by 7km soil anomaly, suggesting the mineralised footprint at Olympus could extend well beyond what has already been mapped.
Hawk’s new sampling programme has been designed to test that possibility.
Approximately 1,350 lag soil samples will be collected across six new grids built around the historical sample lines.
Eight additional 100 m-spaced lines will be established to the east and west of the central historical lines, allowing the company to outline prospect-scale targets around the known anomalies.
Both the historical and newly established lines will be sampled at 100m intervals within the scandium-rich zones already identified through earlier pXRF analysis.
The programme will also extend coverage to the ground surrounding the historical RAB traverses at A to B and E to F, given the highly anomalous scandium grades those holes returned from surface.
Grid sizes across the programme will vary considerably, ranging from a minimum of 800m by 800m up to a maximum of 6,000m by 800m for the largest of the six grids.
All samples collected through the programme will be submitted for formal laboratory analysis, moving beyond the handheld pXRF method used historically.
According to Caithness, a positive set of results would allow the company to progress quickly to the next stage of exploration.
“All samples will be lab assayed and if the results prove positive, it will enable Hawk to move straight to drilling in the next phase of exploration,” he said.
Should the soil sampling confirm the scale and grade of the historical results, Hawk intends to follow up with RAB and aircore drilling alongside further lag soil sampling, as it works to define what it believes could be a significant new scandium province in Western Australia.
