Canada Nickel Company is starting a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) of a very promising base metals property, near Timmins.
In a June 9 news release, the Toronto exploration company announced Ausenco Engineering Canada has been hired as the study consultant for the Crawford Nickel-Cobalt Sulphide Project, 40 kilometres north of the city.
The PEA will be completed by the end of this year.
The purpose of a PEA – sometimes called a scoping study – is to evaluate a project's economic viability. It's one of the first in a series of technical studies done to determine whether a mineral deposit can be developed into a mine.
Canada Nickel is a spinoff company of Noble Mineral Exploration, created last fall for the purpose of advancing and developing the Crawford Project into mine development. The company began trading on the TSX in February.
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The project sits within Noble’s large 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 late February, Canada Nickel posted the first resource calculation for Crawford with the claim of possessing the world's 12th largest resource of nickel sulphide.
A drilling program this spring has revealed a zone of platinum and palladium.
Steering the project will be Christian Brousseau who has been appointed as director of the Crawford Project. He'll oversee the PEA as well as the execution plan, engineering, and construction.
According to Canada Nickel, Brousseau has more than 20 years of experience in engineering, design and construction in the mining industry, including as project director for RNC Minerals' Dumont nickel project. He also worked in various engineering and construction positions with Detour Gold and Goldcorp, and did an eight-year stint with Falconbridge managing capital projects at Sudbury, Raglan, Kidd Creek, and the Horne Smelter in Quebec.
"I am very pleased to announce these appointments and to be working again with Ausenco and Christian, who bring extensive experience from their work on the Dumont Nickel-Cobalt project and other large scale open pit mine-mill operations," said Canada Nickel chairman and CEO Mark Selby in a statement.
"We remain committed to aggressively advancing Crawford, one of the leading next generation nickel-cobalt sulphide and palladium projects, and these appointments will help us maintain the momentum we have generated to date."
