Toronto’s First Cobalt announced it has secured an option on a mine claim next to its Keeley-Frontier project in the historic Cobalt mining camp in northeastern Ontario.
In a July 18 news release, First Cobalt said further consolidates its land position around the former Keeley-Frontier Mine.
The company admits it’s on a mission to accumulate old mine properties, those rich in cobalt mineral occurrences, which have not seen “meaningful” exploration work for more than 75 years.
By employing modern geoscience, they’re examining the possibility of district-scale bulk mining techniques.
“Expansion of First Cobalt’s property to the east of the Keeley-Frontier increases the opportunity to explore for the extensions to this silver-cobalt vein system; especially those that are cobalt enriched,” said Frank Santaguida, First Cobalt’s vice-president of exploration, in a statement.
“This eastern area has largely been forgotten due to the low silver versus high cobalt characteristic. This transaction demonstrates our commitment to consolidate the meaningful property positions within the Camp our strategy to be the first to approach this camp from a bulk mining perspective.”
The Toronto junior miner paid $10,000 cash to an undisclosed optioner and has committed to spending $30,000 in exploration and $30,000 more in cash over a three-year period. The optioner will be granted a two per cent net smelter return royalty.
The area east of Keeley-Frontier also contains the Haileybury Mine, low in silver but rich in cobalt and nickel. Not a lot of exploration work and drilling was ever done in this area.
The company said it’s starting work on this claim by expanding its field mapping in the area to get a picture of the Wettlaufer fault structure which hosted other past producing mines nearby that produced silver and cobalt.
First Cobalt’s main asset, the former Keeley and Frontier Mines, operated as separate mines but mined one deposit.
Between 1908 and 1965, more than 3.3 million pounds of cobalt was recovered at a grade of 0.5 per cent and 19.1 million ounces of silver at a recovered grade of 58 ounces per ton. First Cobalt acquired an option on this property last March
