One of northeastern Ontario’s emerging nickel players has posted a new resource estimate for a Timmins-area deposit that could have open pit and underground mining potential by 2026 or 2027.
After a raft of diamond drilling at its Shaw Dome Project, EV Nickel said its high-grade W4 deposit has more than doubled in size from an earlier estimate performed 13 years ago by previous exploration company.
The measured and indicated resource at W4 stands at 31.3 million pounds at 0.98 per cent, which is considered high grade.
The inferred resource measures 12.1 million pounds at 0.98 per cent nickel.
The difference between measured, indicated and inferred resources is the degree of confidence in the amount of minerals in the ground with measured being the highest and inferred being the lowest.
The estimate stems from many metres of diamond drilling carried out by EV Nickel between 2021 and 2023, on top of historical drilling data carried out by Golden Chalice Resources.
Shaw Dome property is in a historic mining area situated 25 kilometres southeast of Timmins. It hosts two past producing nickel deposits that were mined in the 1970s and 1990s. EV Nickel arrived on the scene in 2021 and immediately went to work.
The Toronto-based junior miner maintains the deposit has plenty of mineral upside as it remains open at depth and along plunge.
The 2010 resource estimate was based on drilling that went down 400 metres from surface. This latest estimate reaches 500 metres.
In a June 12 news release, Paul Davis, the company’s exploration vice-president said this deposit offers “further room to grow.”
“More than doubling the size of the 2010 historical resource for the W4 Deposit confirms that it has the grade and the size to be considered a near-term source of nickel production,” said Davis.
He calls the Shaw Dome “one of the best places in the world to be exploring for nickel” with a mix of high-grade and large-scale mineralization on an expansive 30,000-hectare property.
EV Nickel is following a “two-track strategy” to develop two deposits. Its CarLang deposit, on the northeast end of the property, is a low-grade, big-tonnage resource. W4, on the southeast corner, is high grade.
Back in February, EV Nickel released a resource estimate on CarLang.
In marketing its project, EV Nickel has jumped on the clean mining and energy bandwagon. With government-supported research, the company is developing a bio-leaching technique to produce a nickel sulphide product at its mine site. They claim it will be a cleaner alternative than shipping material off to a conventional smelter to recover nickel, copper and other minerals.
The company pocketed $500,000 from the Ontario government’s Critical Minerals Innovation Fund in March to develop this zero carbon emissions bio-leaching process that erodes the rock to free up the minerals. The company is also working on a carbon capture and storage process to earn carbon credits.
“This is a major step on our mission to accelerate the clean energy transition with our Clean Nickel™,” said EV President-CEO Sean Samson in a statement.
“We have the best of both worlds including an avenue to potentially be in production in the next three to four years from W4 and continue advancing the transformational, large-scale CarLang.”
The company said the estimate forms the basis for an upcoming preliminary economic assessment to “present the economic potential of the deposit.”
