Skip to content

Wallbridge Mining partners with Lonmin to revive former Sudbury mine

Junior miner earns 20 per cent stake in Denison property, creates base metal spinoff company
Parkin Offset core

Wallbridge Mining has been given a 20 per cent ownership stake in a promising base metal property in the Sudbury Basin.

The Sudbury junior miner is joint venturing with Lonmin Canada to run the mining giant’s Denison Property, a former Vale mine that harbours some promising copper, nickel and platinum group metals (PGM) potential.

Wallbridge has created a spinout company, Loncan, to handle its Sudbury assets and its partnerships with Lonmin. Lonman, itself, was acquired by Sibanye-Stillwater last June.

Francois Demers, their vice-president of mining and projects, to run the operation.

Wallbridge has a pipeline of projects underway, including its main Fenelon Gold project in Quebec, and has joint ventured with Lonman on a slew of other exploration projects in the Sudbury area.

"This agreement complements Wallbridge's strategy of separating its gold and base metal assets and enables work on the Sudbury-area properties to be funded entirely within privately-held Loncan,” said Wallbridge president-CEO Marz Kord in an Oct. 29 news release.

“The agreement allows our existing, dedicated, Sudbury-based team to continue their work of generating value from the copper-nickel-PGM assets with resources independent of those driving our gold strategy."

Want to read more stories about business in the North? Subscribe to our newsletter.

Denison property is a former Vale property that was known as the Crean Hill Mine until operations were suspended the early 2000's.

From 2003 to 2017, Lonmin joint ventured with Vale to conduct significant exploration work on the property, located in the southwest corner of the Sudbury Basin.

New PGM-rich zones have been discovered since operations were suspended. Wallbridge said the next steps are to update the resources with new drilling information and complete an economic study.