Highlights
• First metallurgical test at Reid delivers highest grade nickel sulphide concentrate yet achieved by Canada Nickel
• Overall nickel recovery of 63% with half of recovered nickel reporting to nickel sulphide
concentrate grading 60%
• Results achieved utilizing existing flowsheet design developed for the Company’s Crawford Nickel Sulphide project
Canada Nickel Company Inc (TSXV:CNC) (OTCQX:CNIKF) announced robust nickel recoveries from the first metallurgical test on a sample from the Reid property.
The test utilized the same mineral processing flowsheet designed for the Company’s flagship Crawford Nickel Sulphide project. The Company’s Reid project is situated 16 kilometres southwest of Crawford.
Mark Selby, Chair and CEO commented on the project:
“We are very pleased by this first test at Reid which achieved an overall nickel recovery of 63% and achieved expected or better than expected nickel, iron, and chromium concentrate grades. While it is early days at Reid, these results, achieved using the standard flowsheet developed for Crawford, demonstrate the potential to leverage our development work at Crawford, across the portfolio of targets throughout our entire Timmins Nickel District. I am also very pleased to announce that we have closed the acquisition of the Texmont property, where our recently announced drill results support the potential for near-term, smaller scale, open pit production.”
Description of Results
This initial open circuit test was completed by the Company’s third party lab partners on a sample from the higher grade area at the Reid property. The sample had a head grade of 0.35% nickel, 0.10% sulphur and 6.2% iron. This first sample achieved a nickel recovery of 63%, iron recovery of 31% and chromium recovery of 12%. The final nickel concentrates had a combined nickel grade of 46% and cobalt grade of 0.27%. The magnetite concentrate had an iron grade of 55% and chromium grade of 3.0%. All grades and
recoveries, with the exception of iron and chromium recovery, were at or above expected values. Over half of the recovered nickel reported to a nickel sulphide concentrate grading 60%, which is the highest grade nickel sulphide concentrate achieved in more than 120 open cycle tests completed by the Company utilizing this flowsheet.
The sample was selected to represent higher grade, well-serpentinized material and was tested to measure the potential to transfer the Crawford metallurgical process to the Reid ultramafic nickel mineralization. The standard test procedure from the Crawford Feasibility Variability Program was used including grind sizes, reagent dosing strategies and flowsheet layout. As expected, the nickel in the flotation circuit was recovered to a high grade concentrate due to the dominance of higher nickel tenor
heazlewoodite mineralization.
Canada Nickel will follow a similar metallurgical program path as it did with Crawford and begin a variability open circuit testing program to confirm operating parameters and performance and then begin locked cycle testing to confirm metallurgical performance.
Reid Nickel Property Overview
The Reid Property is located just 16 kilometres southwest of Crawford and 37 kilometres northwest of Timmins, and contains an ultramafic body with a target geophysical footprint of 3.9 km2 compared to the Crawford target footprint of 1.6 km2. In the news release dated January 23, 2023, the Company reported
the results of a 16 hole drill program at Reid, which intersected multi-hundred metre intervals of mineralization. The results of this drill program show that the Reid deposit is approximately 50% wider than the Crawford Main Zone and more than 100% wider than the Crawford East Zone.
Figure 1 shows the plan view of the Reid geophysical footprint, with the sample location identified. Sample RAS-002 was taken from drill hole REI22-14 from 343.5 to 391.5 metres within the dunite lithology.
Closing of Texmont Acquisition
Canada Nickel closed its previously announced acquisition of a 100%
interest in the past producing Texmont property situated between the Company’s Deloro and Sothman properties south of Timmins, Ontario (see the Company’s news release dated December 19, 2022). The Texmont property comprises 14 mining leases, which were acquired by the Company for aggregate cash consideration of $4,000,000. In addition, the seller was granted a 2.0% net smelter returns royalty, which the company, at its option, can buy down to 1.0% for $2,500,000. The property has a legacy
ownership interest of 15% and net profits interest of 10%. The Company intends to determine whether these interests are still valid. The Company had previously acquired 14 claims surrounding these mining leases in 2022 as part of its regional property consolidation.
Issuance of Shares to Service Provider
Canada Nickel also announced that, subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange, it has agreed to issue an aggregate of 24,921 common shares of Canada Nickel in satisfaction of $38,623 due to a service provider. The common shares will be subject to a four-month hold period under applicable
securities laws.
Qualified Person and Data Verification
Arthur G. Stokreef, P.Eng (ON), Manager of Process Engineering & Geometallurgy and a “qualified person” as such term is defined by National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical information in this news release on behalf of Canada Nickel Company Inc.
Canada Nickel is a market awareness client of Capital 10X. For more information, including potential conflicts of interest please see our Content Disclaimer.
