On December 10, 2020 Fjordland announced that it had entered into an agreement with Quebec Precious Metals Corporation (“QPM”) to acquire 100% of the Renzy nickel copper project (the “Property”), also known as the Vulcain project.
Highlights Include:
The Renzy Mine deposit was found outcropping on an island within Lake Renzy in 1955. An open pit mine to a maximum depth of 30 m from rock surface previously existed on the property. During the production period from 1969 to 1972, 716,000 short tons were mined with average grades of 0.70 % Nickel and 0.72 % Copper. The concentrates were shipped to Falconbridge facilities in Sudbury. The mine closed when Falconbridge failed to renew the concentrate purchase agreement due to a lagging economy and surplus nickel in world markets.
The Renzy Mine deposit contains, as defined by NI 43-101, Standards for Disclosure for Mineral Projects, a historical mineral resource estimate including indicated resources of 51,000 tonnes 0.79% Ni and 0.72% Cu and inferred resources of 280,000 tonnes at 0.82% Ni and 0.89% Cu with a cut-off grade of 0.7 % Ni equivalent. The resource is taken from a technical report filed on SEDAR entitled "Technical Report - Resources Evaluation
November 2007 Vulcain Property, Hainaut township.” prepared for Matamec Explorations Inc.(“Matamec”) by
Geostat Systems International Inc. and dated November 22, 2007. Matamec merged with QPM in 2018.See“Mineral Resource Statement” below.
In 2005, Matamec drilled a grid of 19 vertical holes averaging 80 m in depth along strike of the original mine.
Examples of higher-grade intercepts are as follows:
|
Intercept |
Ni |
Cu |
Co |
PGM+Au |
Ni Eq. |
|
2.3 |
1.0% |
1.1% |
0.05% |
0.19 |
1.6% |
|
3.0 |
1.0% |
1.6% |
0.05% |
0.24 |
1.9% |
|
4.9 |
2.1% |
1.7% |
0.15% |
0.32 |
3.3% |
|
3.0 |
1.9% |
4.1% |
0.14% |
0.55 |
4.2% |
|
10.8 |
1.3% |
1.8% |
0.09% |
0.22 |
2.3% |
|
14.7 |
1.0% |
1.2% |
0.07% |
0.28 |
1.8% |
In 2007, Geostat Systems International Inc. produced a 43-101 resource. The small resource using a 0.7% Ni equivalent cut-off measured 51,000 tonnes at 0.79% Ni, 0.72% Cu indicated and 280,000 tonnes at 0.82% Ni and 0.89% Cu inferred.
In 2008, Matamec drilled 40 short holes averaging 75 m targeting Induced Polarization (“IP”) anomalies and tested 6 of the 18 areas identified as geophysical target zones based on IP surveys. Results were not press released.
The remaining 12 areas have had no exploration conducted over them.
vicinity of the main Renzy ore zone of which half had reasonable mineralization of around 0.2% to 0.5% Ni and 0.2% to 0.8% Cu. Another 16 holes were drilled on the west side of the claim group. It doesn’t look like they submitted any samples for assay. 6 holes were drilled in the Alba region. 3 holes had mineralization averaging 0.2% Ni and 0.4% Cu. Over reasonable length of 10m to 20m from surface. Inexplicably, the hole furthest to east set up beside the strongest IP anomaly but was drilled in the opposite direction. The diagram above shows the 2008 drill holes superimposed on a map of anomalies identified by MAT in a 2007 report. 18 geological and geophysical target areas are highlighted on the map. It appears as if 12 have had no exploration conducted over them.
The exploration potential of the Renzy claim group appears to be substantial given the low entry cost. Drilling campaigns occurred in 1956, 2005 and 2008. The mid-20th century holes were conducted with AX and EX diameter (approx.. 1”) drill holes down to upwards of 100’ as an exploration tool. The later programs targeted the original pit area and certain other localized areas where bedrock outcrops showed promising chemistry.
The Renzy deposit claim group (marked in red) lies at the south western end of the Renzy Terrane just north of the Renzy Shear Zone. The location of the shear zone and the overall quantity of mafic/ulltramafic rocks that carry sulfides with elevated concentration of Ni Cu and PGM’s bodes well for finding additional deposits. An excerpt from a 2009 thesis summarizes the general area:
“Recently recognized as being the remains of an active Andean margin during the Proterozoic (River, 1997; Rivers and Corrigan, 2000) and potentially having the same types of deposits as similar environments elsewhere in the world, this geological province has long discouraged the mining companies to launch large-scale exploration campaigns because the perception was that erosion destroyed the majority of potential deposits and the complexity of the geology obscured those that remained (Corriveau et al., 2007). This vision is currently changing. Indeed, several important deposits have been discovered in Scandinavia and Australia, two regions also characterized by rocks of a high degree of metamorphism and originating from Proterozoic orogens. The recent discovery of the high-tonnage Ni-Cu magmatic sulphide deposit in Aguablanca in Spain has also demonstrated the potential of ancient arcs to contain significant Ni-Cu mineralization (Tornos et al., 2006). The combination of these factors suggests that the Grenville Province may also contain significant deposits of Ni-Cu magmatic sulphides. The recent reinterpretation of the structural profile of sites with a high degree of metamorphism such as the Grenville Province also indicates that several levels of surface rocks are preserved in these orogens, thus eliminating the hypothesis that erosion has destroyed all the deposits (Corriveau et al. ., 2007)”
Jean-Fancois Montreuil, 2009 Masters Thesis, Laval University.
Overall, we know that the area has the potential to host high grade nickel sulfide deposits. The question remains – Is there the potential to find large enough deposits?
The original model suggested that all mineralization would be near surface. As a result, only shallow targets were explored. Newer models of magma emplacement suggest deeper targets are possible. Matamec’s 2004 43-101 technical report outlined 18 targets that needed to be tested. Only a few of these were tested in 2008. A description in the report of future targets is discussed below (translated from French):
“Following the examination of geological data, old exploration drilling, aeromagnetic and electromagnetic data, Mr. Berger has defined several areas of interest on the Vulcain property. First, the mining sector where a huge first-order EM anomaly which greatly exceeds the scope of the former work of the Renzy Mine and which seems to indicate a potential for more mineralization important than that defined by the Renzy Mine. This huge target was drilled in the winter last but it has not been fully evaluated, additional drilling is necessary to know its full potential. Second, several (18) other targets composed of one or more anomalies Category 2 to 4 EMs have been defined on the property by Mr. Berger. These abnormalities were classified according to the strength and consistency of the 7-channel EM signal together with the magnetic profile. These 18 reconnaissance exploration targets are shown in Figure 12 on the next page and are taken from the November 2004 report by Monsieur Berger. These targets are shown in red in black rectangles. They will be the subject of our next exploration campaign because we believe that even if some of them are weak, these anomalies can represent more deeply buried than those of Lac Renzy, which a very strong EM response in part because they are on the surface. During the last summer, a team from Matamec prospected the lands of 4 of these sectors of interest. All EM anomaly sites visited are in hollows topographic sometimes even marshy. In no place could we see rock flush near the anomalies and yet all around the gneisses form hills pronounced. We believe that these topographic bottoms may represent rocks more friable like ultramafites, host rocks for Cu-Ni mineralization in the region. This is also the case for the Renzy mine where these rocks occupy a low topographic, Lake Renzy. This short prospecting led us to revise our exploration program. It seems very unlikely that we can prospect with hammer and prospector mat these targets geophysics. We will have to attack them with short geophysical polarization surveys caused because this method although more expensive than the Max-Min is more efficient for dissiminated mineralization. At the Renzy mine, like everywhere elsewhere in this type of deposit, the disseminated mineralizations are much more extensive than other types of thread, breccia, semi-massive and massive mineralization which they are rather circumscribed. Older induced polarization surveys done above and around Renzy lenses show very well that this method can detect dissiminated sulphides according to the reports of the time. This method combined with other types of surveying can even monitor peridotite bodies, hosts of nickel-copper mineralization as reported by Black & Riddel, page 18: “induced polarization geophysical techniques have proved remarkably successful in the location of sulphide-bearing zones and somewhat useful as a means of suggesting their concentration in zones of shallow burial. Resistivity data used in conjunction with the induced polarization results have proven useful as a mean of locating the peridotite-gneiss and / or peridotite-pegmatite contact. This is of importance for structural interpretation and particularly useful as an aid in the search for other sulphide occurrences in outlying area of ultrabasic rocks. ” At the time of the mine, several fine targets of induced polarization were never tested by drilling. Ideally, all polarization anomalies caused by surveys that we will do above the 18 targets will have to be tested by one or a few drillings.
In order to move forward, the existing Aerotem survey needs to be reprocessed to identify deeper EM targets. There is no evidence that updated geophysical processing has been used to look at the data. It may be warranted to fly a new survey which uses lower frequency methods to probe for deeper targets.
