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Junior Exploration Sector

Meet the Metals Hunter Who Wants to Make It Big in Ecuador – by James Thornhill (Bloomberg News – October 25, 2021)

https://www.bloombergquint.com/

(Bloomberg) — Mining industry veteran Malcolm Norris says he’s struck upon a gold-copper resource in northern Ecuador that may make the world’s resources giants sit up and take notice.

Norris has seen a surge in interest from institutional investors in the El Palmar project since his exploration company Sunstone Metals Ltd. disclosed a significant discovery to the Australian stock exchange on Oct. 7. That’s reflected in the share price, which has risen almost threefold from its closing level on Oct. 6.

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Upward trend in global exploration budget to continue in 2022 — report – by Staff (Mining.com – October 19, 2021)

https://www.mining.com/

The aggregate annual global exploration budget is expected to increase between 5% and 15% year over year for 2022, according to a new report by S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The market researcher’s prediction is based on its own data that show that in 2021, the aggregate annual global nonferrous exploration budget has increased by 35% year over year to $11.2 billion from $8.3 billion in 2020, signalling that the sector has emerged from the downturn caused by the covid-19 pandemic.

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North Shore palladium mine developer picks engineer for processing plant – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – October 14, 2021)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Generation Mining, the developers of a proposed palladium near Marathon, has selected Wood PLC to handle the project’s engineering work. The global consulting and engineering company was awarded the contract to do the processing plant engineering and the equipment procurement for the Marathon palladium-copper project in northwestern Ontario.

In an Oct. 13 news release, Gen Mining said the goal over the next few months is get 75 per cent of the engineering work completed by the time construction starts. Early ground preparation work is tentatively anticipated sometime in the second half of next year.

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Mining the Northwest: Australian junior miner predicts two-million-ounce gold resource at Pickle Lake – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – October 13, 2021)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

The area around a former Pickle Lake gold mine is hot property for Auteco MInerals. The Australian junior miner expects to build a considerable gold base by the time a 50,000-metre drill program wraps up later this year.

Auteco believes its Pickle Crow Gold Project has the potential to be a sizeable mining camp based on what they estimate is in the ground, what they see in the assays, and what the geology is telling them.

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Lithium Deal Shows China’s Accelerating Race for Battery Metals – by Yvonne Yue Li (Bloomberg News – October 11, 2021)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Lithium has gotten so hot that even China’s gold miners want a slice of the market, sky high valuations and all. Zijin Mining Group Co., a major Chinese gold and copper producer, announced on Friday its first foray into the booming lithium sector with its C$960 million ($770 million) purchase of Neo Lithium Corp.

It’s just the latest in a series of recent acquisitions, mostly involving Chinese bidders for South American assets owned by Canadian firms, amid surging demand for the key ingredient used to power electric vehicles.

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Canada Nickel improves recovery and metallurgical performance at Crawford nickel project – by Daniel Sekulich (Northern Miner – October 6, 2021)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Canada Nickel (TSXV: CNC; US-OTC: CNIKF) has released the results of testing done on samples from its 100%-owned flagship Crawford nickel-cobalt sulphide project in Ontario, about 40 km north of Timmins.

The company says that metallurgical improvements at the project will deliver increased recoveries of nickel, iron and cobalt, as well as enhanced magnetite concentrate quality. These are improvements from the preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for Crawford that was released in May.

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Exploration roundup: Fall brings a frenzy of drilling for gold, nickel in the Timmins district – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – October 7, 2021)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

The Timmins district remains one of the hottest gold and base metal exploration grounds in the world. Fall exploration programs are running at a brisk pace across this historic northeastern Ontario camp as junior miners are eager to develop the next generation of mines.

Class 1 Nickel and Technologies want to bring a former nickel mining property back to life. On the site of the former Alexo Mine, halfway between Timmins and Matheson, the company is performing environmental baseline studies in advance of filing for government permits to move its Alexo-Dundonald Project toward production.

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Former Kirkland Lake CEO to take copper junior Arizona Sonoran public in Canada – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – October 7, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Arizona Sonoran Copper Company Inc. is looking to raise $60-million in an initial public offering on the Toronto Stock Exchange, hoping to cash in on investor enthusiasm for one of the best-performing metals this year.

Run by former Kirkland Lake Gold Ltd. chief executive officer George Ogilvie, the private-equity-owned junior filed paperwork to go public on Wednesday. Arizona Sonoran hopes to revive a copper mining camp in Arizona that ran dry in the 1980s. London-based Tembo Capital Management Ltd. and Resource Capital Funds of Denver are the biggest shareholders.

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Attawapiskat First Nation seeks court injunction against Ring of Fire exploration – by Erik White (CBC News Sudbury – October 5, 2021)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

A court hearing this week sparked by Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario could have big implications for the development of the Ring of Fire.

The First Nation says it wasn’t properly consulted about exploration by mining company Juno in its traditional territory and is seeking an injunction. “The conflicting forces at work loom large over the fate of climate change, the environment, the economy, Attawapiskat, its rights and its culture,” the First Nation’s lawyer, Kate Kempton, told the court Tuesday.

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Artificial intelligence deployed in Sudbury gold hunt – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – October 4, 2021)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

A junior mining outfit is taking an analytic approach to get the geological big picture around a former Sudbury-area gold mine. MacDonald Mines Exploration has engaged GoldSpot Discoveries, a Toronto mining technology company, to help with exploration on its SPJ Project, 40 kilometres northeast of the city.

MacDonald believes there’s a large gold system of interconnected deposits on its 18,930-hectare land package in Davis, Street and Scadding Townships. The property contains the former Scadding Gold Mine, which produced 29,000 ounces of gold in the 1980s.

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Mining the Northwest: Is there a zinc and copper mine in Schreiber’s future? – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – September 23, 2021)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Metallum Resources posts feasibility study showing almost nine-year mine life near Lake Superior’s north shore

A Vancouver zinc exploration company wants to revive mining on the north shore of Lake Superior, 20 kilometres north of Schreiber.

Metallum Resources said there’s enough high-grade zinc and copper in the ground at its Superior Lake Zinc Project to mine for a minimum of 8.5 years as the company probes for more resources this fall around a former mine site, 150 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay.

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Barrick options South Uchi project from Kenorland Minerals – by Jackson Chen (Northern Miner – September 20, 2021)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Kenorland Minerals (TSXV: KLD) announced that it has entered into a property option agreement with Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD) with respect to the company’s South Uchi project in Ontario.

Under the option agreement, Barrick can earn an initial 70% interest in the project by spending a total of $6 million on mineral exploration within six years, of which $3 million are guaranteed expenditures within the first three years.

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Sleepy lithium market stirs to life as electric vehicle industry charges up – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – September 21, 2021)

https://financialpost.com/

Less than a week after Vancouver-based Millennial Lithium Corp. asked shareholders to vote on a proposed all-cash buyout by China’s Ganfeng Lithium Corp., a second buyer has emerged and bid 6.1 per cent higher, offering $377 million in cash.

Millennial did not disclose the second buyer’s identity, but a source told the Financial Post it is Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, or CATL, as Bloomberg News reported.

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Reddit squeeze goes nuclear, boosting uranium-related investments – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – September 14, 2021)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

A speculative rally fuelled by Reddit is juicing the price of uranium and investments with exposure to the commodity, leaving investors and companies alike wondering how long the run will last.

The Sprott Physical Uranium Trust, an exchange-traded investment that tracks the price of uranium, rose by 15.5 per cent on Monday on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Shares of uranium miner Cameco Corp., which have rallied 55 per cent since late August, ended the day flat after being up by 8 per cent at one point. Another producer, Denison Mines Corp., rose by 3 per cent on the New York Stock Exchange.

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Four supersized exploration programs – by Staff (Canadian Mining Journal – September 10, 2021)

https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Gold exploration in Canada is on the upswing. A strong rise in the yellow metal’s price leading up to the August 2020 peak above US$2,000 per oz. has spurred on exploration in Canada that may lead to the nation’s next new mines.

It’s also had the effect of supersizing drill programs for juniors with promising discoveries, savvy management and talented exploration teams. There are now several juniors carrying out supersized drill programs involving 100,000 metres or more in a single year – in many cases before a resource has been compiled for the project. Here’s our look at four such projects.

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