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Thunder Bay zinc explorer finds a friend in Kinross

Wolfden Resources cashes up to do more exploration in Maine
Wolfden Resources Pickett Mountain 1
Wolfden Resources' Pickett Mountain property in Maine.

A Thunder Bay junior miner has teamed with one of the world’s largest gold producers to prove up a zinc deposit in Maine.

Wolfden Resources finalized $2.5 million in financing from Kinross Gold in late March to continue exploration on its 6,870 acre Pickett Mountain property, a high-grade polymetallic deposit.

Kinross now has a 9.7 per cent ownership stake. The arrangement with Kinross involves a non-brokered private placement of 12,500,000 common shares of the Wolfden at a price of 20 cents per share.

A Wolfden news release said the bulk of the money is going into exploration.

“We look forward to working with Kinross as a strategic partner in our efforts to expand the current mineral resources and search for additional deposits at Pickett Mountain,” said company president-CEO Ron Little in a statement.

The northeastern Maine property hosts a volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposit containing zinc (88 per cent), lead(77 per cent), copper (74 per cent), silver and gold, which Wolfden calls “one of the highest-grade undeveloped VMS deposits in North America.”

The current mineral resource is measured at 2.05 million tonnes at 19.3 per cent zinc in the indicated category and 2.03 million tonnes in the inferred column.

The State of Maine recently reformed its mining laws to permit underground mining. The legislation passed in November 2017. No permits are required for drilling and geophysics.

Pickett Mountain is located 85 kilometres west of the New Brunswick border and has a highway, power line and railway siding nearby. The property generates $300,000 a year in timber sales.

A newly discovered footwall zone yielded a drill hole result of 38.2 per cent zinc over 4.1 metres, including 612 grams per tonne (g/t) of silver and 0.5 g/t of gold. A deeper hole hit 19.5 metres of 33.1 per cent zinc.

Wolfden believes the property has excellent upside with nearby satellite deposits and other favourable rocks along a 25-kilometre belt.

The area hasn’t seen significant exploration since the 1980s, but the company said its geological structure is very similar to the Bathurst mining camp in New Brunswick.

Wolfden has another VMS property just across the border in New Brunswick and two nickel-copper properties in Manitoba.