Canada Nickel, Glencore sign Kidd site MOU

Canada Nickel Company Inc. [CNC-TSXV; CNIKF-OTCQB] said Monday January 11 that it has entered into a non-binding MOU with Glencore Canada Corp. to examine the potential use of Glencore’s Kidd concentrator and metallurgical site in Timmins, Ontario, for the treatment and processing of material mined from Canada Nickel’s 100%-owned Crawford nickel-cobalt sulphide project.

Crawford is located 40 km north of Glencore’s operations in the Timmins-Cochrane area of northern Ontario.

“The opportunity to utilize the excess capacity and existing infrastructure at the Kidd met site provides the potential to allow a faster, simpler, smaller-scale start-up of Crawford at a vastly lower capital cost while the company continues to permit and develop a much-larger-scale project currently being contemplated,” said Canada Nickel Chair and CEO Mark Selby.

“Given the potential for the significant change in the scope of the project start-up, the release of the preliminary economic assessment (PEA) will be delayed until the end of March, 2021, to allow this option, if successful, to be incorporated,” Selby said.

On Monday, Canada Nickel shares eased 3.5% or $0.08 to $2.21 on volume of 678,820. The shares are trading in a 52-week range of $3 and 38 cents.

“We are in a robust nickel market, increasingly driven by demand for nickel from the electric vehicle (EV) market which will require new nickel projects to be built over the coming decade,” Selby has said.

Canada Nickel is exploring a number of technologies in a bid to establish Crawford as a zero-carbon footprint operation.

Canada Nickel has completed an initial high-level assessment and will now proceed with a detailed study on the potential for upgrading excess capacity at the Kidd concentrator and/or utilizing existing infrastructure in place at the Kidd met site for milling and further processing of nickel-cobalt and magnetite concentrates that are expected to be produced from Crawford.

Should the study deliver a positive outcome for both parties, the parties will continue good faith negotiations toward a binding agreement. The study is expected to be completed by March, 2021.

Canada Nickel said the measured and indicated resource at Crawford increased by 9% from 657 million tonnes at 0.26% nickel (1.7 million tonnes of nickel). Inferred resources increased by 121% from a previous estimate to 646 million tonnes at 0.24% nickel (1.6 million tonnes of nickel).