Wallbridge Mining reported in late September that Lonmin plc will fund an additional C$5.5 million in expenditures and cash option payments over the coming year to explore for platinum, palladium, copper, nickel, and gold on their North Range and Sudbury Camp joint-venture properties in the Sudbury district of Ontario. The new Lonmin spending commitment was effective October 1, the start of the company’s 2015 fiscal year.
During Lonmin’s 2014 fiscal year, the company logged C$5.4 million in exploration expenditures and cash option payments on the North Range and Sudbury Camp joint ventures. The 2014 work included 20,086 m of drilling and extensive geophysics, mechanical stripping and geological field work.
The North Range joint venture includes, but is not limited to, the Wisner properties, which extend for 5 km along strike on either side of Wallbridge’s Broken Hammer copper-PGM mine. Work on the Wisner properties during 2014 included 12,540 m of mostly shallow initial drilling on a number of target areas, as well as extensive airborne, ground and borehole geophysics. The drilling intersected new copper-PGM mineralization in 13 drill holes at four of the eight target areas tested.
The 2015 program on the North Range properties will include drilling and geophysics on targets identified in 2014 and exploring the untested extents of known offset dykes.
The 2014 exploration program on the Sudbury Camp properties included 7,546 m of drilling and geophysics surveys on the Trill and Skynner Lake properties and detailed geological modeling of the Windy Lake property. The Windy Lake geological modeling identified the potential for several large embayment structures at relatively shallow depths. Embayment structures host over half of the ore deposits mined in the Sudbury district over the past century and are very attractive exploration targets.
Proposed work going forward will include a refocus on the Windy Lake property, with drilling and geophysics to test these potential embayment structures.
