The Widgie Nickel Ltd (ASX: WIN) share price is having an incredible start of the week.
In early trade, the mineral exploration company's shares were up as much as 51% to 35.5 cents.
The Widgie Nickel share price has since pulled back a touch but remains up 34% to 31.5 cents at the time of writing.
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Why is the Widgie Nickel share price rocketing higher?
Investors have been scrambling to buy the mineral exploration company's shares today following the announcement of a major discovery.
However, unlike what you might expect from the company's name, Widgie Nickel has not found nickel. Rather, it has found high-grade lithium bearing pegmatites at the newly named "Faraday prospect" of its Mt Edwards project.
According to the release, lithium bearing pegmatites outcropping over a 600-metre strike with surface expressions of up to 25 meters wide have been identified at the prospect.
Management believes these early stage exploration results are extremely encouraging and provide the company with the opportunity to significantly increase its lithium exploration activity within the highly prospective tenement package.
Field work is expected to commence immediately to drill test high-priority targets at the Faraday prospect as well as detailed mapping, soil and rock chip sampling across the Widgie tenure.
'Couldn't be a better outcome'
Widgie Nickel's managing director, Steve Norregaard, was very pleased with the news. He said:
This initial reconnaissance work identifying high grade spodumene over a significant strike length couldn't be a better outcome for Widgie. To think we have 170,000t of contained nickel and we now can lay claim to hosting complementary and widespread lithium pegmatites in this world class lithium corridor.
Widgie looks forward with great anticipation to getting a drill rig on this highly prospective target which will only complement the existing drilling effort on our nickel resources.
