Canada Nickel Company (TSXV: CNC) has made another discovery with a larger footprint and higher carbon capture potential than its flagship Crawford located in the Timmins mining district of Ontario.
The latest exploration success comes from the Midlothian property, one of 13 projects acquired by the company in November 2022 as part of its plan to consolidate land position surrounding the Crawford property.
Over the last half decade, a total of 30 holes have been drilled at the Midlothian property by previous operators. The best interval yielded 0.24% nickel across a core length of 345 metres, with the final 42 metres grading 0.30% nickel.
The Midlothian project is currently under an option agreement with Canadian Gold Miner (70%) and Laurion Mineral Exploration (30%), whereby Canada Nickel can earn a 100% undivided interest to 50 mining claims covering the property.
To date, the company has drilled four holes totalling 1,548 metres to complete its initial phase of testing a large geophysical target 2.7 kilometres along strike by up to 800 metres thick and open at depth.
On Thursday, Canada Nickel announced positive preliminary drill results from the the four holes, which intersected multi-hundred-metre intervals of mineralized dunite across a strike length of two kilometres.
Preliminary mineralogy samples from first two holes confirm that the mineralization dominated by awaruite, a recoverable nickel-iron alloy mineral. One of the holes had more than triple Crawford’s content of brucite, which is highly reactive for carbon sequestration.
“While we are waiting for assays, we are very excited by the preliminary mineralogy results which included the presence of heazlewoodite and significant amounts of awaruite, a nickel-iron alloy, and significant amounts of brucite, the most highly reactive mineral for carbon sequestration, at more than triple the average amount at Crawford,” Mark Selby, CEO of Canada Nickel, commented.
The new discovery at Midlothian follows a string of regional exploration successes that included the Reid, Deloro, Sothman and Texmont properties, also part of the company’s newly acquired land package. Midlothian now represents on of ten targets with a geophysical footprint larger than Crawford.
“Each success with our geophysical targeting increases the probability of success with the balance of the portfolio and we look forward to further successes across our regional exploration program in 2023,” Selby said.
Shares of Canada Nickel rose 6.9% by 12:45 p.m. Toronto time following the new announcement. The company has a market capitalization of C$209.9 million ($157.3m).