But that's exactly where the experienced geologist, who previously found fame with Jubilee Mines' high-grade Cosmos resource in the late 1990s, has found himself thanks to the combined efforts of an exploration team that has been rebuilt since the start of the pandemic.

 

Rovira had called into Mark Creasy when Azure found itself mired in delays in Mexico, and asked what projects were open for a joint venture.

 

"I've known Mark for about 20 years, so when the board decided to exit Mexico at the start of the pandemic, we were about three months ahead of the pack and the pick-up in interest in Australian metal projects," he told MNN.

 

The Creasy Group had held the ground for more than 15 years but had done limited work beyond some geophysical surveys in 2008, some sampling and mapping in 2012, and a small seven-hole program in 2018.

 

Two of the holes intersected minor mineralisation.

 

Azure completed some more EM, located the conductor, rotated the drillbit 90 degrees and made history.

 

"With hindsight, we can see he was drilling the tip where Andover was faulted to one side," Rovira said.

 

He said the breakthrough came from doing "good old-fashioned surface geology".

 

The ‘Eureka' moment that led to the Andover nickel-copper-cobalt discovery was when Rovira took at trip into the Pilbara and noted something past explorers had missed.

 

"During my first trip there by myself, I saw how much gossan was sticking out of the ground with very obvious visual copper, and samples of 1-2% nickel. I saw there was a lot of nickel up there," he said.

 

"How could you not see it?"

 

Yet somehow, despite past exploration by the likes of BHP since the 1990s had either drilled in the wrong locations or just failed to realise what they were working over.

 

Once the Andover deal was done, Azure was able to hire exploration manager and Jubilee veteran Graham Leaver, the geologist credited with the discovery of the Odysseus nickel deposit that's now being developed by IGO, following its takeover of Western Areas.

 

Leaver put tother a team that includes ex-senior geologist Dr Josh Combs, whose career included working with IGO at the play opening Nova-Bollinger magmatic discovery in the Fraser Range.

 

Rovira said Azure was 3-6 months ahead of the metals boom and hiring frenzy in getting its choice of staff.

 

Rovira credits the two for helping drive the definition of the initial resource of 51,700t of nickel, 21,7000t of copper and 2290t of cobalt at Andover.

 

"Graham joined when we were drilling the first hole, and Josh on hole five."

 

Subsequent to the discovery, it has added a number of successes, including the nearby Ridgeline, which lacks surface expression, being was a blind EM target. 

 

Azure has two rigs in the field and has hit mineralisation in every prospect, including even higher-grade nickel at Ridgeline, where there is now an effort into defining a maiden resource.

 

"The beauty of this area is the rocks all outcrop, there's very little soil cover, so we can easily trace the host horizon."

 

The EM surveys have so far proven a highly effective tool in targeting drilling, with no false positives.

 

Azure now sees mineralisation across a 4-5km-long, 500m wide corridor that extends between Ridgeline and Seaview, and when it starts drilling the area dubbed the Southern Mineral Corridor, a visually distinctive mafic-ultramafic intrusive trend, could be extended to 10km.

 

Andover has been proven to 500m depth, and Ridgeline to 200m. Both remain open at depth.

 

Other prospects - Seaview and Skyline - need more drilling, but Rovira is confident in saying the Andover project is shaping up to host "half a dozen" Nova-Bollinger/Savannah style underground mines feeding a central plant. 

 

There are 60 identified airborne EM anomalies, one dozen refined with surface loop EM, and four have been successfully drilled to date. 

 

"We're still just scratching the surface. It's only 20 months since we started drilling and we have two deposits already. If we can continue this rate of success this will end up being a new nickel province," he said.

 

That's not a bad result for an area that was geologically well described, and picked over, but where the glaring potential was just in geologists' blind spots.

 

Azure and Creasy Group (which retains 40%) are looking to kick off a feasibility study in early 2023. 

 

Azure Minerals is nominated for Explorer of the Year in the 2022 MNN Awards.