Icebreaker opens possibilities for Raglan nickel mine

The New Quebec Raglan project, Falconbridge’s perennial mine of tomorrow, is inching closer to a production decision. Recently, a freighter successfully navigated the winter ice and docked at an abandoned port in Deception Bay, 24 miles from the nickel-copper project on the Ungava Peninsula in northern Quebec.

To Mike Knuckey, Falconbridge’s vice-president of exploration, such a feat suddenly extends the potential shipping season for this isolated project, 1,000 miles north of Montreal, well past the former three months the company thought it would have.

“One constraint has been the shipping season. We made this experimental voyage (in March) to see if we could get in at this time of year,” he said. The voyage of the M.V. Arctic, a freighter upgraded to icebreaker status, means the shipping season could last up to eight months.

Falconbridge, jointly owned by Noranda (TSE) and the Swedish firm Trelleborg AB, is spending up to $20 million on the project this year. A pre-feasibility study should be in Knuckey’s hands sometime this month. A positive report will lead to a full-scale feasibility.

The feasibility study will include environmental and social impact studies and some site preparation. The bulk of the money will be spent on an underground ramp, lateral work, drill stations and diamond drilling. The underground program should be over by this time next year.

Raglan is an enormous nickel-copper play that sole owner Falconbridge has coaxed along for years. Its remote location on the northern tip of the Ungava Peninsula is its impediment to development. The project involves a series of deposits along a 30-35-mile strike length; Falconbridge has focused its efforts on several of the deposits.

Reserves in one localized cluster of mineralized zones stand at 18.2 million tons grading 3.1% nickel and 0.8% copper, roughly double the grade of the company’s Sudbury mines. The tonnage, stated in the proven, probable and drill-indicated categories, represents a 4.4-million-ton increase from earlier reports.

“In terms of grade, we figure Raglan is the best undeveloped sulphide deposit around,” Knuckey said.

Because of its location, Raglan will be a fly-in, fly-out operation (assuming development follows the feasibility). As with northern operations such as Echo Bay’s Lupin mine and Cominco’s Polaris mine, Raglan would have workers arrive from points south in company-owned or company-chartered aircraft for a one week or two-week stint.

Falconbridge envisions a 30-to-40-million lb. nickel producer in the Ungava, initially an open pit operation and later underground. (In 1990, Falconbridge’s other operations produced about 62,050 tons, or 24 million lb., of nickel.)

A full report on the activities of Falconbridge, not only in Quebec but in Ontario and elsewhere, will appear in the May issue of The Northern Miner Magazine.