The explorer said drilling at its 70%-owned Fraser Range joint venture and its fully owned Fraser Range ground extended known oxide zone mineralisation by about 200m, with a 9m intersection grading 0.52% nickel and 0.05% copper from 20m.

Assays from the initial reconnaissance diamond drill traversed 200m to the north of the shallow drill testing included 16.9m at 0.14% nickel and 0.05% copper from 48m and 15.1m at 0.13% nickel and 0.025% copper from 75.2m.

A third diamond drillhole traversed more mafic rocks but failed to intersect significant sulphides.

Sirius called the results “encouraging” and confirmed that the analysis of the samples revealed rock identical to that at the Nova-Bollinger discovery, namely originally olivine-bearing mafic rocks termed picrites.

The sulphides have been confirmed to be magnetic in origin and include the nickel-bearing mineral pentlandite and the copper-bearing mineral chalcopyrite.

The company believes the extended area is significantly prospective due to the combination of rock types, sulphides and the scale of the intrusion, which measures 4km long and up to 300m thick.

Last week, Sirius said it had identified several soil anomalies that could represent an intrusion similar to the Eye feature at Fraser Range.

Each of the anomalies were reported at between 400m and 800m in length and peaks at 1980 parts per million nickel, 100-286ppm copper and 100-195ppm cobalt.

The anomalies form a cluster within a magnetic low measuring around 5km long by 2km wide.

Drilling to date at Nova outside of the Nova-Bollinger area included 77 diamond holes and 1053 rotary air blast and air core holes to an average depth of 35.

The remainder of infill results from the shallow reconnaissance program is expected to be available within two weeks.

Follow-up drilling has been planned to test the topmost 150m of the project’s western mafic complex.

A high-powered electromagnetic survey will test for the presence of massive nickel-copper sulphides at deeper levels.

Nova has a resource of 245,000 tonnes of nickel, 101,000t copper and 7800t of cobalt while Bollinger holds 81,000t of nickel, 33,000t of copper and 3300t of cobalt.

Shares in Sirius were last trading 0.5% lower at $A2.13.