Canada Nickel paves way to develope one of world’s largest nickel sulfide mines

Canada Nickel, the company that is  developing the Crawford Project, north of Timmins, Ontario, one of the largest nickel deposits, has cashed-up with new investments as it progresses towards developing the site located north of the legendary Kidd Creek mine.
Anglo American has invested US $24 million (C$26,million) into Canada Nickel and its Crawford Project. Anglo-American, the British-based mining company, will take a 9.9 per cent stake in Canada Nickel. Anglo-American as part of the deal has an off-take agreement where upon it can purchase up to 10 per cent of the recoveries of the nickel concentrate, iron and chromium contained in the magnetite concentrates and related carbon credits from the Crawford Nickel Project. The agreement with Anglo American closed on March 2, 2023 and is now in effect.  
In addition, Canada Nickel will have access to Anglo American’s FutureSmart Mining™. Under this part of the agreement Anglo will receive ore samples of at least 100 tonnes from Canada Nickel for testing, using technologies from Anglo’s FutureSmart Mining™ which  aims to improve processing recoveries, reduce Crawford’s energy, and water consumption and overall emission footprint.
Canada Nickel proposes to build an open-pit mine 40 km north of Timmins. It’s considered a low-grade, high tonnage nickel play with a measured and indicated resource of 1.43-billion tonnes of nickel at 0.24 per cent.
A second cash infusion for Canada Nickel as it marches to development of the Crawford nickel deposit comes from a bought deal agreement with Scotiabank and several other investors. Scotiabank acted as the lead underwriter and sole book runner on behalf of a syndicate of other underwriters who agreed to purchase for resale Canada Nickel’s securities on a bought deal arrangement that will bring proceeds of C$18.2 million to the company through 7,462,000 common shares at a price of $1.77 per share. An additional 1,748,300 shares are to be issued as “flow-through” shares. The agreement with the syndicate of underwriters closed on February 14th, 2023.
The combined addition of C$44 million dollars to Canada Nickel’s treasury will help finance the company through to next year. The project management plan for the company called for Engineering and Feasibility Studies from 2021 to 2022. The current period from 2023 to 2025 consists of Impact Statement and Environmental Approvals.
Construction is scheduled to begin  in 2025 and be completed by 2027. The Crawford Mine is expected to become operational in 2027 and have a mining life of 30 years up to 2057. The Crawford Mill is expected to last an additional 10 years, closing in 2067.
Closure and decommission of the Crawford site will begin in 2067 and run through to 2070. Post-closure and Monitoring will commence in 2070.        
In February the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada held a preliminary consultation with the public on the 15th,16th and 22nd in Timmins. The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada completed two virtual online public information sessions into Canada Nickel’s Crawford Nickel Project. The February 15 session was conducted in English and the February 16 in French.
During the sessions which the public participated via a Zoom meeting, IAAC representatives gave a presentation about the elements of the impact assessment Canada Nickel completed for the Crawford Project in Timmins, north of Glencore’s Kidd Creek Mine. During the English presentation spokesperson Harry Hees described the Impact Assessment process and the studies and other requirements Canada Nickel must meet to gain federal approval for Crawford Nickel. Canada Nickel submitted a Technical Study on the development of Crawford Lake and how it intends to proceed with public consultations. The comment period ended March 23, 2023.

 

Canada Nickel is continuing its aggressive acquisitions of nickel properties in the Timmins area

 

 

In November, 2021, the company announced the acquisition of 13 additional properties. The combined target surface footprint of all the 13 properties combined equals 37.7 square km – 40 times larger than the current Crawford Main Zone resource of 0.85 square km.
The ten target properties have larger footprints than Crawford and nine confirmed to contain the same host mineralization as Crawford. Sothman target property has historical higher grade, shallow resource of approximately 190,000 tons of 1.24% nickel (with 300 metres strike length)1; remaining 2.2 km of strike length is largely untested.
 

Four target areas have yielded drill intersections of > 0.3% nickel including:                                         
·Sothman: 2.31% nickel and 0.19% copper over true width of 3.2 metres within 1.58% nickel and 0.12% copper over true width of 8.6 metres from 41 metres.
·Deloro: 0.38% nickel and 0.22 g/t PGM over core length of 15.5 metres within 0.28% nickel and 0.09 g/t PGM over core length of 299 metres from 241 metres.
·Midlothian: 0.24% nickel over core length of 345 metres, including 0.30% nickel over 42 metres.
·Mann Southeast: multiple 3 metre intervals grading 0.31-0.33% nickel within 111 metres of dunite across the entire core length.

In December 2022 Canada Nickel continued to expand its Timmins assets as it has signed a deal to acquire a 100% interest in the past producing Texmont property situated between the Company’s Deloro and Sothman properties south of Timmins, Ontario.  The Company is also reporting results from the first four holes at Texmont and first five holes targeting higher grade mineralization at Sothman.  All nine holes have assays pending.
Highlights include:
·The Texmont property provides potential for near-term open pit production from near-surface high grade mineralization.
·High grade potential of regional package already demonstrated at multiple properties –Texmont, Sothman, Bannockburn. 

Mineralization outcrops at all three properties
·Texmont – Historic resource1 of 3.2 million tonnes of 0.9% nickel hosted within bulk tonnage target.
·Sothman – Historic resource2 of 190,000 tons grading 1.24% nickel
·Bannockburn – Historic drilling with multiple intervals greater than 2%
·Crawford PGM zone results include two holes with core length of 30 metres of 1.82 g/t palladium + platinum and 15.0 metres of 1.88 g/t platinum + palladium.

Mark Selby said, “the acquisition of the Texmont property provides near-term smaller scale production potential and is highly complementary to our large-scale Crawford and regional nickel sulphide projects.

 

Canada Nickel Demonstrates Robust Nickel Recoveries at the Reid Ultramafic Nickel Project

 

On March 15, 2023 Canada Nickel announced robust nickel recoveries from the first metallurgical test on a sample from the Reid property. The test utilized the same mineral processing flowsheet designed for the Company’s flagship Crawford Nickel Sulphide project.  The Company’s Reid project is situated 16 kilometres southwest of Crawford.
Mark Selby, Chair and CEO said, “We are very pleased by this first test at Reid which achieved an overall nickel recovery of 63% and achieved expected or better than expected nickel, iron, and chromium concentrate grades.  While it is early days at Reid, these results, achieved using the standard flowsheet developed for Crawford, demonstrate the potential to leverage our development work at Crawford, across the portfolio of targets throughout our entire Timmins Nickel District. I am also very pleased to announce that we have closed the acquisition of the Texmont property, where our recently announced drill results support the potential for near-term, smaller scale, open pit production.”
The Reid Property is located just 16 kilometres southwest of Crawford and 37 kilometres northwest of Timmins, and contains an ultramafic body with a target geophysical footprint of 3.9 km2 compared to the Crawford target footprint of 1.6 km2. In the news release dated January 23, 2023, the Company reported the results of a 16 hole drill program at Reid, which intersected multi-hundred metre intervals of mineralization. The results of this drill program show that the Reid deposit is approx. 50% wider than the Crawford Main Zone and more than 100% wider than the Crawford East Zone.

 

Mark Selby, Chair and CEO of Canada Nickel will be speaking during the Indigenous Partnerships & Critical Minerals Forum June 7th in Timmins during the Canadian Mining Expo. The conference is filling quickly and seats are limited and includes a lunch. If you are interested in purchasing a ticket, you can get them online at  https://virtex.canadianminingexpo.com/expoactivity/activitypage/type/expoactivity_forum

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