New nickel estimates from two deposits boost company’s resource count in northeastern Ontario
Canada Nickel has amassed almost four billion tonnes in nickel resources in the ground around Timmins.
Just before Christmas, the Toronto multi-mine developer published mineral resources for more two deposits, Midlothian and Bannockburn, both situated south of the city.
Like Canada Nickel’s other properties in the area, including its flagship Crawford project, the Midlothian and Bannockburn projects are shaping up to be low-grade, big-tonnage type of nickel deposits.
To date, Canada Nickel has posted resource estimates on eight of its nine properties in the region.
That amounts to 3.98 billion tonnes of 0.24 per cent nickel in the measured and Indicated resources, for a total of 9.4 million tonnes of nickel metal. There’s an inferred resource of 4.95 billion tonnes of 0.23 per cent nickel, for a total of 11.5 million tonnes of contained nickel metal.
The difference between indicated and inferred resources is the degree of confidence in the amount of minerals in the ground, with indicated being the higher category and inferred being the lower.
Midlothian and Bannockburn are situated some 60 kilometres south of Timmins and west of Matachewan and Alamos Gold’s Young-Davidson mine.
Midlothian contains an inferred resource of 595 million tonnes grading 0.28 per cent nickel, for a total of 1.68 million tonnes of contained nickel. The company has.been drilling on the property since 2023.
Bannockburn serves up an indicated resources of 63 million tonnes grading 0.28 per cent nickel, for a total of 0.18 million tonnes of contained nickel and inferred resource of 129 million tonnes grading 0.27 per cent nickel, for a total of 0.34 million tonnes of contained nickel.
Another resource estimate for a ninth deposit, the Nesbitt project, north of Timmins, is coming up sometime in the first quarter of 2026.
Canada Nickel’s kingpin project is Crawford, 40 kilometres northeast of Timmins. Crawford made national headlines in November when Ottawa named it one of Canada’s leading “nation-building” projects, eligible for government development funds and destined for fast-tracking through the federal regulatory permitting process.
Construction at Crawford is slated to begin the end of next year. The company has been arranging $2 billion in financing to break ground. First production comes at the end of 2028. Crawford will be the company’s first mine in a hub-and-spoke concept of processing nickel from multiple mines in the area.
CEO Mark Selby hasn’t been shy about promoting Timmins as an emerging nickel district that’s on par with Sudbury.
“We continue to demonstrate the world-class potential of the Timmins Nickel District,” said Selby in a Dec. 18 statement. “We were very pleased with both the Bannockburn and Midlothian resources – particularly as the Midlothian resource was generated from just 45 per cent of the target geophysical footprint and yielded the highest average grade resource to date from our projects in the Timmins Nickel District.”