Northwest Copper outlines new drill target at B.C. project
Northwest Copper Corp. [NWST-TSXV] said Wednesday it has identified a new drill target at its Kwanika copper-gold project in north-central B.C.
The company said the “highly prospective drill target” is located approximately 500 metres south of the Kwanika Central Zone. “The Transfer Target has potential to add shallow high-impact, open-pittable mineralization within the existing footprint of the Kwanika Project,’’ said the company’s Interim President and CEO David Moore.
“The target can be tested by a small number of relatively shallow drill holes and is logistically easy to access,’’ he said. “Projections of grade based on truncated resource blocks west of the Line Fault can be used to effectively target this drilling and suggest that the Transfer Target may represent the faulted offset of the Kwanika Zone.” Moore went on to say that company staff are continuing to reassess historical results to identify additional high-impact drill targets within the company’s portfolio.
Northwest Copper is a new diversified copper-gold explorer and developer with a pipeline of projects in British Columbia.
The company is the product of the merger of Serengeti Resources and Sun Metals Corp. and is led by Peter Ball, a geologist who previously spend 13 years with Newmont Corp., [NGT-TSX, NEM-NYSE], the world’s leading gold producer,
The transaction was designed to consolidate the contiguous copper-gold exploration and development assets that included Serengeti’s Kwanika project and Sun Metals’ Stardust project. Both of these assets are expected to benefit from operational synergies as they are advanced with a combined development strategy.
At the time of the merger deal, Serengeti was advancing its Kwanika copper-gold project in partnership with POSCO DAEWOOD and exploring its extensive portfolio of properties in north-central B.C.
It hoped to complete a pre-feasibility study at Kwanika that would examine the viability of a proposed open-pit and bulk underground copper-gold mine. However, the company didn’t have the funds to carry out that plan.
Back in early January, 2023, Northwest said a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) has outlined a project that would aim to mine approximately 96 million tonnes of material in a combination of open pit and underground operations from the 100%-owned Kwanika and Stardust deposits. The PEA contemplates a 22,000 tonnes per day process plant, producing high-quality copper concentrate with significant gold and silver by-product credits.
The PEA envisages initial capital of $567.9 million with a construction period of two years.
On June 20, 2023, Northwest Copper shares closed at 17 cents and currently trade in a 52-week range of 51 cents and 16.5 cents.
Northwest Copper recently postponed its annual meeting after being notified that a dissident shareholder intends to propose a slate of six nominees for the company’s board of directors
The meeting was originally scheduled for June 23, 2023. It will now take place on September 6th.