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UK Listed Junior Mining Company | Gold & Metal Exploration

Poppins

Last month, we were pleased to see Palladium One announce another breakthrough in its exploration of the Pickle Lake project it holds in a joint venture with us in Ontario.
 
Specifically, the firm revealed that its latest assays had encountered further zones of nickel-copper mineralisation at the West Pickle Lake discovery.
 
The news is highly encouraging for multiple reasons.
 
For one thing, Palladium One is continuing to see high-grade material over short intersections. Grades of up to 5.7% nickel and 1.9% copper reinforce the focal point of the assays to date.
 
Perhaps even more importantly, however, the assays also show wider and shallower nickel and copper intercepts than ever before. This includes 0.6% nickel and 0.4% copper over 28.2 meters and 0.43% nickel and 0.26% copper over 27 meters.
 
It suggests that, alongside high-grade mineralisation suited to underground mining, West Pickle Lake has the potential for lower-grade “bulk tonnage” mineralisation amenable to open pit mining.
 
Open pit mining, as the name would suggest, involves removing overburden, rock, and soil to access a desired resource that can be excavated through an open pit. Because it takes place so close to the surface, it stands to provide Palladium One with a cost-effective and large scale avenue of potential production at West Pickle Lake.
 
That, we believe, would likely be of great interest to any larger company looking to boost its nickel and copper reserves at less cost, time, or effort than they would be able to at a project offering only underground potential.
 
After all, open pit mining is the most common mining method used for nickel production worldwide. Notable examples of high-profile projects include South32’s Cerro Matoso mine in Colombia, ARM’s Nkomati mine in South Africa, and Vale’s Voisey’s Bay mine in Canada.
 
So, what’s next?
 
With the mineralised zone remaining open to the west, east, and at depth, it seems likely that Palladium One’s efforts to establish West Pickle Lake’s true potential will continue.
 
The company is likely in a strong position to pursue this line of inquiry. Just last month, it received a C$4.2 million investment from Glencore to support exploration and development activities at its nickel projects.
 
We, for one, can’t wait to see what the company’s ongoing work may reveal.
 
There is, of course, the obvious reason – Pickle Lake is held in a joint venture between First Class and Palladium so we have direct exposure to any upside potential. But beyond this, the project sits on the Eastern flank of our own flagship, 100%-owned North Hemlo project.

📷FCM’s North Hemlo property with West Pickle Lake

We’re currently investigating whether the discovery’s nickel-copper potential continues onto our own licence area. If it does, then the results Palladium One is currently delivering stand to have highly positive implications for our own operations.
 
After all, we’ve already identified a 3km-long gold and molybdenum trend at North Hemlo including grab samples of up to 19.6g/t gold…
 
Likewise, the outlook for nickel is looking particularly strong right now due to increasing demand in EV batteries, renewable energy technologies, and other industrial applications…
 
And that’s not even to mention the many additional activities taking place across our wider project portfolio including, among many other things, reconnaissance exploration at the Zigzag lithium project and the Sunbeam gold project.
 
All told, Palladium One’s progress could hardly be timelier, and we will be keeping our eyes peeled for more results over the coming weeks and months.

West Pickle Lake's open-pit potential: A game-changer for our operations?