A Toronto nickel explorer, working ground north of Timmins, has secured the first half of a $13-million financing package for exploration and economic assessment work on a potential district-scale, series of nickel deposits.
Canada Nickel Company announced the closing of the first tranche of its private placement financing of more than $8 million on Sept. 30. The second tranche of $5 million in flow-through shares closes Oct.14.
The company believes over the next few months that it can start to unlock the full scale of the mineral potential on its 4,900-hectare property, the Crawford nickel-cobalt sulphide project, 40 kilometres north of the city.
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The proceeds are earmaked to fund feasibility study work through 2021 at Crawford and to accelerate regional exploration on the company's outlying properties, as well as for working capital purposes.
The company spent the spring and summer infill drilling on the property, finding some very encouraging high-grade results at the west and east ends of its Main Zone. A zone of palladium and platinum was also outlined last spring.
Those results will be fed into an updated resource estimate due out shortly and will form the basis for preliminary economic assessment expected to be finished by year's end.
The company is now turning its attention this fall and winter to step-out exploration of other targets of opportunity on its properties to the north and northwest of its Main Zone. An airborne geophysical survey began in September to pin down several nickel-bearing targets in these areas.
The Crawford Project sits within Noble Mineral Exploration’s larger 78,527-hectare Project 81 holdings, next to the Kidd Creek Mine Complex. The entire property covers 14 townships and hosts gold, nickel, cobalt and base metals at various stages of exploration.
In pitching its future mine project as a zero-emissions operation. Canada Nickel created a spinoff company, NetZero Metals, in July to begin research on a processing facility for the Timmins area.
The goal is to use various technologies in the mining, milling and processing stages that will produce zero-carbon nickel, cobalt and iron products.
