Emerging Australian nickel miner, Allegiance Mining has estimated resources for a portion of the East Avebury and Saxon deposits which were recently discovered 1km east of the Avebury Nickel Mine located near Zeehan, on the west coast of Tasmania.

The deposit styles are the same as the main Avebury deposit and are open to the east, west and down-dip.

A 200 metre strike length of the East Avebury and Saxon deposits has been drilled on a 50 metre by 100 metre pattern. Preliminary Inferred Resource estimates for the three lenses of mineralisation delineated so far, East Avebury North, East Avebury South and Saxon contain up to 17,000 tonnes of nickel, depending on the minimum cut-off grade applied to the estimates.

The company is continuing drilling and significant additions are anticipated. The East Avebury and Saxon deposits are accessible to existing infrastructure and the significant widths of nickel sulphide mineralisation suggest the deposits are amenable to the bulk mining methods employed in the Avebury Mine.

Allegiance chairman Tony Howland-Rose says: "These new resources highlight the prospectivity of the Avebury nickel province and demonstrates that exploration has a high likelihood of significantly enhancing the longevity of the Avebury Nickel Project.

"We look forward to further extensions to these resources as the company continues to evaluate the easterly extensions to the Avebury ore systems. We also expect to discover zones of higher grade mineralisation as the resources are delineated in more detail," Tony Howland-Rose says.

Earlier this year, Allegiance has discovered the Bison nickel deposit immediately southeast of the Avebury mine and has other shallow zones of mineralisation as exploration targets over the coming year as the Avebury Nickel Project moves closer to completion in the fourth quarter of this year.