White Cliff Minerals (ASX: WCN) has picked up a project from private owners in Canada that boasts some off-the-scale historic copper drill holes from the sixties that look like they are begging for follow up. The new project is in the Rae copper region in Nunavut, Canada and comes replete with an unofficial, non-JORC compliant resource of 4.16 million tonnes at 2.96 per cent.
The newly acquired license sits between White Cliff’s existing tenements at Rae and just 3km south of the Hope Lake Airstrip, where the company plans to base its ongoing field operations for the coming year.
Its Danvers deposit was first drilled in the late 1960s and features some exquisite intercepts, including a thick 39.4m section running some 4.9 per cent copper from 60m, 47.1m grading 3.2 per cent copper from 42m and a 27.5m intersection going 4 per cent copper from 76.7m.
The company says further exploration was carried out in 2003 and 2005 revealing a substantial intercept of 72.7m going 1.6 per cent copper which extended the mineralised envelope and confirmed the deposit remains open to expansion in all directions.
White Cliff says it intends to expand the 550m long, 200m wide and 150m deep resource through its 2025 drilling campaigns. However, it insists the main priority of the drilling in the new year will be its giant Hulk sedimentary target and the extremely high-grade vein systems of the Thor, Vision and Rocket prospects.
This is a value acquisition for shareholders. This moderate tonne but lower grade historic resource of 4.16mt @ 2.96% Cu is but one of several styles of mineralisation the Company expects to find throughout the broader licence area. Others targets include the very large tonne targets of Hulk, the high grade-high tonne potential of Stark, the very high grade native copper flow top replacement targets and finally the extremely high grade Thor, Rocket and Vision areas.
White Cliff Minerals Managing Director Troy Whittaker
The Danvers deposit sits within the Teshierpi fault zone, a copper-rich structure with historic production. The fault zone and its associated mineralised systems have been mapped over a strike length exceeding 64km at Rae, presenting a serious and promising prioritising predicament for management and its target drilling in the new year.
The acquisition expands White Cliff’s controlling position at Rae to a commanding 1198 square kilometres with the newly acquired Danvers acting as somewhat of a springboard for the company in its near-term resource development ambitions.
The acquisition will set White Cliff back a meagre CAD$700,000 (A$764,000) in cash and shares over three tranches and will attract a 1 per cent royalty for the seller. White Cliff has the option to buy back 0.5 per cent of the royalty for CAD$1 million (A$1.09 million) should it deem it to be beneficial further down the track.
The company will primarily look to convert Danver’s historic resource to a JORC-compliant status with the company remaining well-funded for all immediate exploration on its high-grade, scalable targets following a $5 million capital raising by businessman John Hancock, which was conducted at a premium price of 2.5c per share.
Plans are now underway to conduct additional field investigations alongside the initial drilling campaign at Rae, with mobilisation activities expected to begin in the first quarter of 2025.
The prospectivity of the Rae copper project has long appealed to White Cliff. The high-grade copper samples appear to underline a reported 17th century prospector’s discovery of huge native copper nuggets at surface, allegedly weighing up to two kilograms.
At face value, White Cliff appears to have stolen the new project in an environment that many believe is going to be insatiable for copper going forward. The existing drill hits from the sixties are nothing less than extraordinary. The fact that it was still in private hands is even more extraordinary – as is the purchase price of just CAD$7000k.
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