An emerging Timmins nickel player that's advancing a project with open-pit mine potential has struck a non-binding agreement with Glencore Canada to consider processing material closer to home.
Canada Nickel Company has signed a memorandum of understanding with Glencore for potential use of Glencore's Kidd concentrator and metallurgical site - known as the Met Site - in the east end of Timmins.
The refinery would process material mined from Canada Nickel’s Crawford Nickel-Cobalt Sulphide project, 40 kilometres north of the city.
According to Canada Nickel, the concentrator at the Met Site has excess capacity and other infrastructure for milling and processing nickel-cobalt and magnetite concentrates that would be mined at Crawford.
If a detailed study to assess the Met Site delivers positive results at the end of March, both parties will hammer out a more binding agreement.
The Crawford Project is about a 15-minute drive from Glencore's Kidd Mine, north of Timmins.
Glencore's Kidd Metallurgical Site is 27 kilometres east of the community. Built in 1966, the 12,500-tonne-per-day concentrator processes metal ore for copper and zinc concentrates.
Canada Nickel expects to release a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) of the Main Zone on the Crawford Project by the end of the first quarter of this year to give investors a first glimpse of the operational life of a possible open-pit mine. A more in-depth feasibility study will be released later this year.
The company calls Crawford one of the world's top nickel sulphide projects.
Exploration continues on the 4,900-hectare property to prove up other high-value prospects on the property, including a separate zone of platinum group metals.
“The opportunity to utilize the excess capacity and existing infrastructure at the Kidd Met Site provides the potential to allow a faster, simpler, smaller scale start-up of Crawford at a vastly lower capital cost while the company continues to permit and develop the much larger scale project currently being contemplated," said Canada Nickel chair and CEO Mark Selby in a Jan. 11 news release.
"Given the potential for this significant change in the scope of the project start-up, the release of the preliminary economic assessment (PEA) will be delayed until the end of March 2021 to allow this option, if successful, to be incorporated."