Timmins mine builder Canada Nickel has netted $19.4 million to advance its proposed Crawford nickel sulphide project, north of the city.
The Toronto company’s newest fundraising effort involves a $13-million private placement and $4.5 million in flow-through shares, the latter to be used for exploration purposes. Agnico Eagle is planning a $1.87-million investment to preserve its 10.1 per cent stake in the company.
In a June 26 news release, Canada Nickel said it plans to use the proceeds from the brokered offering to advance Crawford, plus for working capital and general corporate purposes.
Canada Nickel management expects a key federal permit for Crawford this fall, after which it will make a construction decision to build the $2-billion open-pit mine and all the related infrastructure.
Crawford is a low-grade, big tonnage open-pit mine proposal, 40 kilometres north of Timmins, with an estimated 41-year mine life. It contains 9.7 million tonnes of measured, indicated and inferred resources.
Canada Nickel has a lot of money on the table to develop Crawford, particularly in attracting government subsidies for net-zero emitting critical metals projects in refundable tax credits.
Last fall, Export Development Canada delivered a letter of intent for up to $678 million to provide debt funding of up to 18 years after a due diligence process.
Samsung SDI bought into the company last year to become a shareholder and has an option to up their interest to 10 per cent with an investment of US$100.5 million and an offtake agreement if the Crawford project is greenlit.
Then there’s government funding to be had through the Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund, Canada Growth Fund and a new provincial critical minerals processing fund.
Other funding options are available, internationally, through InfraVia Capital and German Resource Fund, which provide equity and grant funds for mine projects providing material to Europe.
Canada Nickel CEO Mark Selby believes the size and scale of the Crawford mine can be replicated across the district.
Besides Crawford, Canada Nickel is promoting themselves as a district-scale miner in promising to have mineral resource estimates on as many as nine deposits across northeastern Ontario by year’s end.
In an interview earlier this month with CRUX Investor, Selby said his understanding of Ottawa’s willingness to fund critical minerals grants is based on large-scale mining proposals.
“They want large-scale resource additions; they don’t want small projects. The federal priority project list, we’ve been told, is going to be a relatively small short list of priority projects Our hope is that we are on that list.”
Selby believes their properties can collectively make Timmins the largest nickel sulphide district in world, comparable to, and maybe bigger than, Norilsk in Russia and the Jinchuan region in China.
If Canada Nickel snags that federal permit by the end of this year, it will be six years since the company launched its first drill program at Crawford to making a construction decision. The tentative production start is 2027-2028.
