White Cliff Minerals has added a massive 3300 square kilometres to its Canadian ground holdings after securing the Radium Point multi-element project in the Northwest Territories region that takes in several historical mining operations.
The company is focussed on iron-oxide-copper-gold-uranium (IOCG-U) deposits and silver mineralisation in the area that hosts the historical Eldorado, Echo Bay and Contact Lake mines.
White Cliff stock surged 50 per cent after the latest announcement hit the ASX to touch 1.5 cents during intraday trading from a previous close of 1 cent last week, with more than 36 million shares changing hands on Monday morning.
Management says Radium Point and the Eldorado/Echo Bay mine was historically recognised as a significant source of uranium and other metals during World War II and was recorded as being one of Canada's largest uranium mining districts at the time.
Canada’s Northwest Territories Geoscience office has identified the area around the project to have the highest potential for IOCG-U style mineralisation in Canada, while exploration and mining activities to date generally predate any modern technical assessments.
White Cliff says mineral exploration has been largely non-existent in the area since the late 80s, with IOCG-U mining ceasing in 1960 and silver and copper mining coming to a halt in the 1980s.
Historical production from the project area prior to 1982 shows some impressive figures including 13.7 million pounds of uranium oxide, 34.2 million ounces of refined silver and more than 11.3 million pounds of copper with associated gold credits.
Additional resources produced within the tenements include 104,000kg of lead, 127,000kg of nickel and 227,000kg of cobalt.
Eldorado is considered to be the first mine in the Northwest Territories with radium and silver the original metals of interest. Uranium became the target resource in 1942 followed by silver and copper from 1975.
The historic Echo Bay mine is adjacent to Eldorado and produced more than 23.5 million ounces of silver and 4505 tonnes of copper between 1964 and 1974.
Contact Lake was initially mined for silver with minor uranium amounts also recovered. More recent work focused on remnant material in addition to tailings which was thought to contain a large amount of residual silver.
White Cliff initially plans to focus in and around the former mined areas to identify extensions to previously exploited mineral bodies, in addition to known outcropping prospects throughout the licence area that have never been followed up.
Management says historical work undertaken prior to1985 by multiple public institutions and private companies over Radium Point demonstrates widespread undrilled mineralisation expressed at surface. The company aims to release these results once further work is done to verify their high-grade nature.
White Cliff Minerals chairman Roderick McIllree said: "This addition of a large scale uranium mining province to our portfolio is another advancing step in our strategy to secure large, scalable, high grade, high quality copper and uranium projects withing Tier 1 mining jurisdictions. The project area, which includes dozens of historic and proven mines covers a significant portion of the highly productive Echo Bay stratovolcano complex located within the Great Bear Magmatic Zone.”
In November last year, the company secured a swathe of ground in the Canadian province of Nunavut after an agreement with a private party for 61 mineral claims covering 80,500 hectares at Coppermine River. Management says the Coppermine area hosts a raft of high-grade copper lodes that sit along the same structural trend, primarily consisting of native copper, chalcocite, bornite, and chalcopyrite.
Using existing high-resolution magnetics, in addition to extensive rock-chip, trench and drill results, White Cliff says outcropping structure and mineralisation can be traced over more than a whopping 100km of strike length.
Exploration results include one rock-chip sample from the adequately named Halo prospect returning assays of 30.24 per cent copper and 34 grams per tonne silver, while a second showed 30.25 per cent copper and 43g/t silver.
Rock-chip samples from the Cu-Tar prospect delivered even higher results, with one assay returning 35.54 per cent copper and 17g/t silver. The company’s Don target has returned multiple samples greater than 40 per cent copper with another showing 30.7 per cent copper and more than 22g/t silver.
With the uranium price getting all stratospheric lately, White Cliff’s new ground pick up – particularly as it relates to uranium – just might work out to be fortuitous.
It wasn’t all that long ago that experienced uranium people were picking US$50 a pound as the point at which it would be game on for uranium players. COVID led inflation has probably gobbled up a bit of that, however with uranium now closer to US$100 it would seem that White Cliff is in the right mineral at the right time.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Michael Philipps
