SPC Nickel (SPC.V) is currently drilling its Lockerby East project in Sudbury, Ontario, where a 4,200 meter drill program consisting of 14 holes should be getting close to completion.
The assay results of the first hole of this year, WG-22-001 were released earlier in June and it was quite interesting to see the company immediately hitting the nickel-rich polymetallic mineralization. The drill bit intersected 38 meters containing 0.75% nickel-equivalent, of which 0.63% was actually nickel. As you can see below, there were plenty of additional metals that could be by-product credits further down the road.
SPC Nickel used the higher grade interval of 24 meters containing 0.97% nickel-equivalent as its headline which is a very fair representation of the situation. This means the residual 14 meters in the interval has an average grade of ‘just’ 0.37% nickel but using a nickel price of $14 per pound, that grade still represents a rock value of in excess of US$100/t (before taking recovery rates and payability percentages into account).
SPC started drilling at the West Graham zone where historical drill programs encountered grades of around 1% nickel-equivalent and the assay results from the first hole seem to confirm the historical data. The drill program will go a long way to confirm the historical resource of 8.55 million tonnes at 0.45% nickel in the indicated resource category and an additional 2 million tonnes at an average grade of 0.38% nickel in the inferred resource category (both resources also contained a decent amount of copper). An additional resource at Lockerby East contained 180,000 tonnes in the indicated resource category at an average grade of 2.32% nickel with an additional 40,000 tonnes at an average grade of 2.90% nickel. Adding up the nickel (not nickel-equivalent) in both deposits and both resource categories outlines a nickel content of approximately 110 million pounds.
Disclosure: The author has a small long position in SPC Nickel. Please read our disclaimer.
