Ownership: 100%
Commodities: Nickel, Copper, Cobalt
Location: NW Ontario
Status: Advanced Nickel Deposit
Next Steps: Surface exploration and definition drilling plan, in addition to geotechnical, metallurgical and environmental work
VIEW / DOWNLOAD: Kenbridge Technical Report – Sedar: September 17, 2020
Tartisan Nickel’s Flagship Project: Kenbridge Nickel Deposit
In 2018 Tartisan Nickel Corp. (formerly Tartisan Resources Corp.) underwent a strategic review of how the Company would move forward in light of weak investment in metals markets. At the time there appeared to be an emerging electric vehicle (EV) movement which Tartisan Nickel Corp. thought was going to become a driving force in the metals market. This thinking lead to a merger with Canadian Arrow Mines Limited, a junior explorer which owned the Kenbridge Nickel Deposit in northwestern Ontario.
The Kenbridge Nickel Deposit was discovered in 1937 by Coniagas and is located in Kenora, Ontario between Fort Frances and Dryden. Falconbridge Limited acquired the property in 1952, began construction in 1954 with a subsequent mining operation lasting for 2.5 years. A 609 metre deep shaft with two working levels were developed and a bulk sample was extracted. At that time, there was no feasible way to move the ore to facilities, so it was shut down in 1958. The project sat dormant until 2007 when Canadian Arrow acquired the property, completed a 40,000 metre drill campaign and proceeded to establish a NI 43-101 Resource Estimate & Preliminary Economic Assessment (Historic PEA, 2008 various updates in 2010)
The Kenbridge Nickel Deposit is located in a stable political and mining friendly region (New Gold’s Rainy River Gold Deposit is located 80 km to the south) and has all season road access to within 9 kilometres of the deposit.
Kenbridge Nickel Resource Updated Estimates
Tartisan Nickel published (Sedar: September 17, 2020) a NI 43-101 updated resource estimate that outlined a combined open-pit and underground, historic measured and indicated resource of 7.58 Mt at 0.58% nickel, 0.32% copper for a total of 95 million pounds of contained nickel. An additional 0.985 Mt at 1% nickel and 0.62% copper (22 million pounds contained nickel) were calculated as inferred mineral resources. The pit constrained Measured & Indicated Mineral Resources total 5.27 Mt of 0.45% nickel; 0.26% copper; and 0.009% cobalt at an NSR cut-off value of CDN$15/tonne. The out-of-pit Measured & Indicated Mineral Resources total 2.23 Mt of 0.86% nickel; 0.45% copper; and 0.006% cobalt. Inferred Mineral Resources out-of-pit total 0.985 Mt at 1.00% nickel; 0.62% copper; and 0.003% cobalt, at an NSR cut-off value of CDN$60/tonne. Details of the mineral resource estimate are shown in Table 1.
Table 1.
Figure 1. Kenbridge Deposit 3D view illustrating calculated NSR blocks and drill hole intersections of significance.
Aster Funds Survey of Kenbridge Nickel Project
Tartisan CEO Mark Appleby said, “the survey picked out the Kenbridge Deposit and has shown the possible extension to the Kenbridge Deposit and three additional trends that relate directly to underlying geology and structure implicit in the Kenbridge Deposit. Of significant interest, the survey found two gold trends as well, which include the Violet and Nina historic gold occurrences. One of the occurrences is almost 54 hectares in size and covers almost all of three of our staked claims on the border of the Kenbridge property.”
TVM Map for Nickel on the Kenbridge Project.
Additionally, there are several untested exploration targets on the property, such as the Kenbridge North target that holds similar geophysical characteristics to the Kenbridge Deposit.
Kenbridge Claim Map.
Kenbridge Geological Setting.
Since the original magnetic survey by Falconbridge Nickel in 1955, approximately 10 detailed geophysical surveys have been conducted over the Kenbridge deposit and property, but none were deep-seeking geophysical studies,” said Tartisan Nickel CEO Mark Appleby. “Since our purchase of the Canadian Arrow assets in February 2018, we have undertaken a careful review of the asset. Our geophysical programs should put our whole geophysical database into a real discovery context so that when we go to drill the Kenbridge property, we will have the best possible target definition.”