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Transition Metals

Sudbury-based Transition Metals has more than 30 exploration projects covering more than 2,000 square kilometres across the country. Yet, it’s firmly focused on its end goal.
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Transition Metals conducts channel sampling at its Haultain property in the Abitibi area. The company is getting attention for its diverse portfolio of projects spanning five plays across Canada.

Sudbury-based Transition Metals has more than 30 exploration projects covering more than 2,000 square kilometres across the country. Yet, it’s firmly focused on its end goal.

While most juniors take a traditional approach to development, concentrating on one or two flagship projects, Transition is following the business-generator model, which allows it to diversify early on, while issuing less equity in the company so shareholders get a greater piece of the pie.

“They’re both good models, just different,” said Scott McLean, Transition’s president and CEO. “One’s selling ownership in the company; one’s selling ownership in the individual assets.”

Transition bundles its projects into five plays: gold in Abitibi and Nunavut, copper in Saskatchewan, and nickel, copper, PGMs in Thunder Bay and Sudbury. It has subordinate projects in Minnesota, BC and the Northwest Territories.

The project getting the most attention is Sunday Lake in Thunder Bay, on which Transition has partnered with Implats, the world’s second largest platinum
producer.

Characterized as a significant new discovery, Sunday Lake is noted for its smaller size and higher grade anomalies with sulphides and massive sulphides. The discovery intersection was 20 metres showing 3.22 grams per tonne(g/t) PGMs—with twice the amount of platinum as palladium. That’s unusual, McLean said, since deposits usually have more palladium than platinum.

For making the discovery, Transition was selected as the Discoverer of the Year by the Northwestern Ontario Prospectors Association. A 2,500-metre drilling program began on the property in March.

“One of the key things for our business model is to find partners, so we’re really focused on finding partners for some of these projects that need funding right now,” McLean said “But we will be doing other work in other areas and generate more projects as we go forward as well.”

Also turning heads is the nickel-copper-PGE Aer-Kidd property in Sudbury, located on the Worthington Offset Dyke along strike from Vale’s Totten Mine and KGHM International’s Victoria exploration project.

Limited work has been done on the property, but while looking at open holes with modern geophysics Transition found anomalies which, in Sudbury, “can’t be anything else than massive sulfides,” McLean said.

“There are not many places in the world where you can be down dip from known mineralization in a world-class mining camp and have this quality of target,” McLean said.

Transition has created a separate company, Sudbury Platinum Corp., of which it retains 65 per cent, to oversee the project. In April, the company closed a $1.5-million non-brokered private placement with Royal Nickel Corp., the proceeds of which will be used to complete up to 4,000 metres of drilling.

Abitibi, too, is looking promising for Transition. Its Haultain project is focused on the Ridout Structure, which hasn’t seen as much exploration as other areas in Abitibi. McLean said this marks a new discovery that looks similar to deposits at Kirkland Lake and could grow to a camp-sized scale.

“It’s a good area for a junior to be involved in and now we think we have the next big discovery at Haultain,” he said.

Of the 21 holes and 10 trenches put in, McLean said results returned high-grade quartz veins with almost 100 g/t gold, which is “pretty exciting.” The company is actively looking for partners on this project.

In April, it closed a non-brokered private placement worth $2.068 million. McLean said the company is in a good position to go forward for the next few years.

Despite the recent downturn in mining, McLean is optimistic things will turn around in 2014-2015 and said Transition will be there to take advantage of it.

“We’re going to be one of those companies that survives: we’re cashed up, we have good partners, and we’re very tightly held,” he said. “Our stock doesn’t trade much, so when we do have good news, the stock moves very strongly.”