With a historic resource in what is arguably one of the most prolific and stable mining regions of the world, SPC Nickel Corp. is hard at work this summer further defining nickel mineral resources at its 100 per cent-owned Lockerby East Property, tucked neatly in the Sudbury Basin in northern Ontario.
The Lockerby East Property, which hosts the West Graham Deposit, contains over 100 million pounds of nickel and 75 million pounds of copper, with an indicated resource of 8.55M tonnes based on a 2009 technical report.
Early in 2023, SPC Nickel struck a historic cooperation agreement with nickel giant Vale Canada, the first of its kind in decades. The deal consolidated SPC’s West Graham Deposit and Vale’s Crean Hill 3 Deposit, which runs contiguous and adjacent to West Graham, into one much larger land-package.
Crean Hill 3 hosts a historic mineral estimate of 16.78Mt @ 0.43 per cent Ni and 0.30 per cent Cu.
The deal also presented SPC with a transformative opportunity to redefine the historic resources and turn the deposit into high-quality nickel-copper asset in one of the top nickel mining camps globally.
The Lockerby East Property is located in an area with a rich mining history that has already produced over 25 million tonnes of ore from a series of underground and open pit mines. Since the late 1880s, more than 70 mines have produced nearly two billion tonnes of ore in the Sudbury area, worth an estimated $330 billion using current metals prices.
“With the addition of the Crean Hill 3 Deposit, we believe the property has significant potential for a large tonnage, open-pit resources close to infrastructure in a proven and stable jurisdiction,” said SPC Nickel chief executive officer Grant Mourre.
Recently, the company wrapped up its 5,000-metre Phase 1 drilling program on the Crean Hill 3 Property, the first activity of its kind on the property since 1960. By the end of May, the company had drilled 5,338 metres in 27 holes, further confirming the extension of the West Graham mineralization across the adjacent Crean Hill 3 Property. Assay results from 16 holes have been received to date.
“The first phase of drilling intersected wide zones of nickel-copper mineralization of grades equal to or better than that of the historic resource. We really confirmed our initial investment thesis that the mineralized zone extends across the property boundaries into the Crean Hill 3 property,” said Mourre.
Recent results underscore this with hole WG-23-042 returning the highest grades of mineralization yet. Hole WG-23-042 intersected a zone of high-grade mineralization grading 1.71 per cent Ni and 0.46 per cent Cu over 20.0 metres from 286.0 to 306.0 metres. This interval is part of a wider interval that returned 1.06 per cent Ni and 0.46 per cent Cu over 50.0 metres from 256.0 to 306.0 metres.
Now, with the closing of the recently announced private placement on June 29, 2023, SPC is ready to launch into a Phase 2 drilling program and Mourre is confident about the project’s prospects. Ultimately, the company is working towards delivering a combined updated mineral resource estimate at the West Graham Project, which is expected before year’s end.
