Canada Nickel achieves initial metallurgical success at Mann Northwest Property

“We are very pleased by the first tests at Mann Northwest which achieved overall nickel recoveries of 58% and 59% and achieved expected nickel and iron concentrate grades," said Mark Selby, CEO. 

"These initial results at Mann Northwest, along with our earlier success achieved at Reid using the standard flowsheet developed for Crawford, demonstrate the potential to leverage our development work at Crawford across the portfolio of targets throughout the Timmins Nickel District.”

Canada Nickel Company Inc. is pleased to announce robust recovery and concentrate quality results from the first set of metallurgical tests on samples from the Mann Northwest property.  The results were achieved using the standard flowsheet developed for the Crawford Nickel Sulphide Project.

Canada Nickel is in the process of completing the earn-in of an 80% interest in the Mann property, with the remaining 20% owned by Noble Mineral Exploration Inc., located 22 km east of Crawford, 20 km south of Cochrane, and 45 km northeast of Timmins, covering the Mann Township. Within the property, there are  three large ultramafic bodies, each of which has a target geophysical footprint larger than the 1.6 km2 footprint of Crawford. Mann Northwest has a target footprint of 6.0 km2; Mann Central is 3.1 km2, and Mann Southeast is 4.1 km2. To support the on-going exploration efforts at the Mann property, metallurgical test work has been initiated.

Table 1 summarizes the recovery results of the first two open circuit tests from the Mann Northwest property on samples with head grades of 0.29% and 0.30% nickel. The samples were tested at a third-party lab to evaluate the metallurgical potential of the property. Both samples delivered strong recovery performance, with total nickel recoveries of 58% and 59% and iron recoveries of 44% and 48%. Cobalt recoveries were 15% and 28% and chromium recoveries were 10% in both tests.  More than half of the recovered nickel was recovered to nickel concentrates with an average grade greater than 38% nickel. Iron concentrate grades averaged 58% and 62% iron in the two tests. The Company will follow a similar metallurgical program path as it did with Crawford and begin a variability open circuit testing program to confirm operating parameters and performance and then begin locked cycle testing to confirm metallurgical performance and concentrate grades and recovery to be used in future engineering studies.
 
Table 1. Open Circuit Test Results

  Head Grades Recovery

 Ni
(%)Co
(%)S
(%)Fe
(%)Cr
(%)Ni
(%)Co
(%)Fe
(%)Cr
(%)

Sample 10.290.0120.046.30.3759284410

Sample 20.300.0110.136.40.5058154810

 
The samples were selected as higher grade, well-serpentinized dunite samples and confirmed the potential to transfer the Crawford metallurgical process to the Mann ultramafic nickel mineralization. The standard test procedure from the Crawford Feasibility Variability Program was used including grind sizes, reagent dosing strategies and flowsheet layout.

Sample Location
Figure 1 shows the plan view of the Mann properties with the “X” markers indicating where the samples were taken from. Sample 1 was taken from drill hole MAN23-03 from 200 to 273 meters and Sample 2 was taken from MAN23-02 from 112 to 164 meters.

Figure 1 – Plan View of Mann – Drill Results and Sample Location Overlain on Total Magnetic Intensity

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