fyi NAN.V Nickel Investing ArticleMonday June 9, 2014, 4:15am PDT
By Charlotte McLeod - Exclusive to Nickel Investing News
It’s been almost a year since Nickel Investing News (NIN) last caught up with Neil Richardson, COO of North American Nickel (TSXV:NAN), and a lot has happened in that time. In particular, the company has made significant progress at its Greenland-based Maniitsoq project.
In the interview below, Rick Mark, the company’s CEO, joins Richardson to talk about what North American Nickel has planned for that project this summer. They also touch on how the company has been affected by current nickel prices and what makes it a compelling investment opportunity.
NIN: Starting off with an easy question, can you give me a little background information on North American Nickel?
RM: North American Nickel is a public resource development company that was formed about four years ag o with a specific interest in nickel. We trade on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol NAN.
In 2011, we had the opportunity to acquire a very large, known nickel belt in Southwest Greenland called the Greenland Norite Belt; it has become known as the Maniitsoq nickel sulfide project. We own 100 percent of this 75-kilometer-long nickel belt, which is about the size of the 100-year-old Sudbury Nickel Camp in Ontario, so that in itself is quite remarkable for a small company.
NIN: Yes, that’s pretty significant. Why had no other companies acquired that land previously?
RM: There’s actually a really interesting history attached to Maniitsoq. In the 1960s, a small Danish company sent two guys out, dropped them off on rusty gossans and had them use man-carried winkie drills that could reach only about 50 meters in depth. They did that for 10 years. They drilled across the entire belt, but ultimately could not determine structures or targets to justify spending more money, so they walked away.
The giant nickel sulfide discovery at Voisey’s Bay was discovered in Newfoundland and Labrador in the early 1990s, and after that happened, people looked across at Greenland and decided to take a look since it was once part of North America and has a known nickel belt. Two major mining companies, Cominco and Falconbridge, did just that. Cominco, now Teck Resources (TSX:TCK.A,NYSE:TCK), flew an EM survey using fixed-wing aircraft, the best technology of the day. A fixed-wing aircraft flies high and fast, and since the topography is rugged, they didn’t detect significant anomalies; as a result, they, too, walked away. Falconbridge focused on ground EM for one season, but could not get a big enough target and also le ft.
Fortunately for North American Nickel, we have the data from all three companies’ work and the core from the drilling done in the 1960s. That was a huge advantage to us as we began to work at Maniitsoq.
We arrived in 2011 with today’s helicopter-borne VTEM technology. VMS Ventures (TSXV:VMS), which owns 22 percent of this company, made its Reed copper mine discovery in 2007 in Manitoba with the same helicopter-borne EM technology, so it’s something we’re very familiar with. This EM technology, aided by today’s computer advancements, is 15 years newer than what Cominco used, so when we flew over just the northern part of the belt in late 2011, many anomalies sho wed up. The VTEM worked. That was enough to get Sentient Group involved.
This truly is a “new-technology-in-an-old-camp” story. Many discoveries have been made by revisiting known mineralized areas with the newest exploration technologies of the day.
NIN: What is Sentient Group? And what does its involvement in Maniitsoq mean for North American Nickel?
RM: Sentient Group is a fund that manages about $2.7 billion in assets; it now owns 41.3 percent of the company. It is Australia based and very well known and respected in the industry. It is an excellent partner.
A major reason Sentient became a shareholder is that Maniitsoq is the only nickel sulfide exploration project in the world today that’s sitting on ice-free tide water. When we took out this exploration license in 2011 it was the largest license ever granted by the Greenland government, and Sentient noticed becau se it was watching Southwest Greenland. The Gulf Stream goes by Southwest Greenland, and therefore you’ve got ice-free tide water. Shipping by boat is the cheapest method of transportation, and with our project only 25 kilometers from the closest fjord, our transportation costs will be greatly reduced versus other operations that are hundreds of kilometers from tide water and have to truck or rail their concentrate to port. Our Maniitsoq project has access to a smelter in Labrador and there’s a smelter in Scandinavia, so transportation costs will certainly be much lower compared to nickel that comes out of the Raglan Belt in Northern Canada.
The fact that Sentient has increased its ownership to 41.3 percent through exercising warrants and fully engaging that percentage in this most recent financing I think can be seen as a confidence measure for investors looking at North American Nickel. Sentient has done its due diligence and continues to maintai n its ownership position.
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