Prony Resources plans for restart of nickel production in New Caledonia
The company, which operates the Goro mine and a plant producing battery-grade nickel, returned workers to facilities on Monday.
Pancontinental Resources (TSXV: PUC) announced today it has started a diamond drill program on its nickel-cobalt-copper Montcalm project, located 65 kilometres northwest of Timmins in the eastern Canadian province of Ontario.
The 3,780-hectares project sits within the Montcalm Gabbro Complex in the Montcalm Greenstone Belt. It is contiguous to and surrounds the western, northwestern and southwestern portion of the former Montcalm mine, owned by Glencore and which produced 3,931,610 tonnes of ore grading 1.25% nickel, 0.67% copper, and 0.051% cobalt, with an excess of 4 million pounds of Co.
In a press release, Pancon revealed that its objective for the initial phase of Montcalm’s program is to drill at least 4,500 metres to test a series of new conductor targets identified in 2018 using airborne Virtual Time Domain Electromagnetic, or VTEM, max geophysics.
According to the Toronto-based company, the newly identified VTEM conductors to be drill-tested coincide with a pronounced gravity high Pancon identified from a separate airborne gravity geophysical survey carried out last year.
“We spent 2018 repositioning Pancon for the global battery metals bull market we believe is just beginning,” Layton Croft, Pancon’s President and CEO, said in the media brief. “Today our seasoned team has amassed a strong exploration portfolio of nickel-cobalt-copper projects in the world’s safest, best endowed and most prospective mining jurisdiction: Ontario. Our maiden drill program at Montcalm is the result of extensive preparation and geological analyses of historic work and advanced geophysical technology not available to previous operators. We prefer exploring in the shadow of a headframe and our Montcalm drill program begins exactly that.”
