It's been a dozen years since Wallbridge Mining Company Ltd. first arrived in Sudbury to explore for nickel, copper, and PGE mineralization. But 2012 is poised to mark a major milestone for the junior mining company as it moves from exploration to development.
At its copper, platinum and palladium Broken Hammer property, located north of Capreol, a pre-feasibility study is underway, and the company is optimistic it can made a decision about production in 2012.
“It brings us to another level,” said Ron Poirier, who works in investor relations for Wallbridge. “We're not just an exploration company now—we have an asset that we can actually mine. It's not a large deposit, but it's a good model and there are a lot of people looking over our shoulder to see how well we do with that model, so it'll be interesting to see what the future brings.”
A 2005 estimate inferred the mineral resource to be 251,000 tonnes at a grade of 3.80 grams per tonne (g/t) total precious metals (1.56 g/t palladium, 1.62 g/t platinum and 0.61 g/t gold), 1.00 per cent copper and 0.10 per cent nickel.
Over the summer, the company undertook a 30,500-tonne bulk sample excavation at the property. Drilling following the bulk sample this summer revealed new veins of mineralization extending out past the resource, which is encouraging, said Joshua Bailey, manager of joint ventures for Wallbridge.
“Part of doing the pre-feasibility study will be an updated resource estimate for the deposit, which should be increased because of that,” he said. “As well, we'll release more recent metal prices, which are more favourable, so we'll be announcing an updated resource for the deposit as well.”
Tetra Tech (formerly Wardrop Engineering) has been retained to undertake the pre-feasibility and feasibility studies, while AMEC will complete the environmental and permitting requirements, which will be a major focus for the company over the next six to nine months, Bailey said.
North of Capreol, Wallbridge's Milnet 1500 Zone property in the Parkin Offset Dyke, a joint venture with South Africa-based Impala, is also showing promise. The company has embarked on a 2,700-metre drill program on the property, located beneath an historic mine.
Initial drill results show a high-grade nickel, copper, platinum and palladium deposit with mineralization comparable to the types of deposits found in the Copper Cliff-area mines or Vale's new Totten Mine, Bailey said.
“The geophysics show it's continuing to extend past where we've intersected it in the drill core,” he said. “We do a geophysical survey down inside the drill hole and it shows the mineralization we hit is extending past, so it's encouraging for us to step over and do another drill hole through and try to follow it and make it bigger.”
Though Broken Hammer and the Milnet 1500 Zone are the company's most advanced ventures, Wallbridge has additional projects in various stages of exploration.
At the Hess Offset Dyke, near Cartier on the North Range of the Sudbury basin, the company has expanded the search area on its property by 44 km. It's a new area that hasn't been explored before, Bailey said.
“We're going through, right now, a program of doing the first pass of geophysics overtop of it to look for conductors that might be sulphite mineralization and then we'll drill those,” Bailey said. “That's in the very early stage, but it's exciting because it's expanded the whole search space of the Sudbury basin.”
On the East Range, through a joint venture with Xstrata Nickel, Wallbridge plans to drill 2,000 metres before the year's end to follow up on a platinum, palladium and gold deposit discovered at Amy Lake. Also on the East Range, 400 metres of drilling are planned for the company's Skynner Lake property, which is being jointly explored with Lonmin PLC.
Partnerships with the larger firms help to finance the work Wallbridge is undertaking.
“We're involved with two of the largest precious metals developers in the world, being Lonmin and Impala, and they're second and third on the scale in terms of size, so we've got good strategic partners,” Poirier said.
Two companies have been spun off from Wallbridge: Duluth Metals is exploring and developing copper, nickel, and PGM deposits in the Duluth Complex mining camp in Duluth, Minn., while Miocene Metals is exploring for and developing porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum deposits within the Cascade Magmatic Arc of southwestern British Columbia.
Bailey said that, because of its infrastructure and long-time understanding of mining, Sudbury remains a worthwhile and potentially lucrative area for exploration and development.
“There have been a lot of discoveries in Sudbury in the last 15 years,” Bailey said. “So even though there have been 125 years of mining, it's still an incredible place to be exploring and big things are being found.”
