Aston Minerals, an aspiring nickel mine developer in the Timmins area, is looking to swing a deal on a gold deposit at its Eldeston Project.
The Australian junior miner has designs on developing an open-pit nickel mine, 60 kilometres south of Timmins and wants to use the money from a sale of the gold asset to put back into advancing its Bardwell nickel-cobalt deposit.
In a recent video update to shareholders, managing director Russell Bradford said Aston began the process to “monetize” its 1.5-million-ounce deposit by sending out a “teaser” to more than 100 gold companies. About 70 per cent of those companies bit and are in Aston’s online data room performing their due diligence.
Bradford anticipates a sale of the gold asset by year’s end.
Those interested, he said, represent a broad spectrum, from major miners to junior exploration companies. Bradford said he’s regularly on calls talking about deal structures and wants those funds to develop the nickel deposit.
Bradford, who joined the company last summer, relocated from Perth, Australia to Toronto to better manage the project and make contacts with Ontario and U.S. government officials to access critical minerals-related funding.
Nickel is a big part of the North American electric vehicle battery manufacturing supply chain. Aston wants in on it.
Aston is seeking funding through Ontario’s mines ministry for critical minerals innovation. Bradford said their application has been completed and submitted. Across the border, there’s more subsidies available through the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act.
Bradford said they plan to submit the same 20-page white paper to the Department of Energy, Department of Defence and Department of Commerce later this year
Aston actually started out as a gold company with a deposit situated on the Cadillac-Larder fault, the geological structure which hosts many major gold mines in northeastern Ontario.
Things changed when nickel and cobalt were discovered on the property in 2022. The latest resource at the Bardwell site now stands at 1.27 billion tonnes of nickel at 0.27 per cent and cobalt at 0.011 per cent.
Similar to Canada Nickel’s nearby Crawford project, the company imagines a massive bulk mining operation with huge tonnage.
Bradford has been bold enough to say that the size of the ore body would support a mine life of 40 years, producing between 25,000 and 30,000 tonnes of metal annually.
Most of the company’s work this year is largely technical, to figure out the metal recoveries and develop a mineralogical map on how to mine the deposit.
Bradford expects a scoping study on what a nickel mine could look like to be out by the first quarter of 2025.
On the Indigenous consultation front, Aston has signed agreements with Matachewan and Mattagami First Nations to develop the property.
