Callinex grows Flin Flon footprint

Over the last two years, Callinex Mines (TSXV: CNX; US-OTC: CLLXF) has raised $15 million on the back of exploration success at its Pine Bay polymetallic project in Manitoba.

Pine Bay lies on a claim package that is 16 km from Hudbay Minerals’ (TSX: HBM; NYSE: HBM) 6,000-tonne-per-day Flin Flon processing facility. The property covers a 10 km trend with four stacked volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) horizons. The company has been trying to acquire more prospective ground nearby.

Callinex recently signed an option agreement to pick up a 100% stake in the Big Island polymetallic project, whose property boundaries are contiguous to Pine Bay’s and include the Tara Lake deposit. (The Pine Bay deposit is 7 km southeast of Tara Lake.)

A drill rig at Callinex Mines’ Pine Bay VMS project near Flin Flon, Manitoba. Credit: Callinex Mines.

“We’ve been looking at it for the last two years, but members of our technical team have had their eyes on the project long before they joined Callinex,” the company’s president and CEO Max Porterfield says.

Porterfield describes Tara Lake, which is 10 km east of Hudbay’s 777 mine, as one of the highest-grade zinc and gold-rich VMS deposits ever discovered within the Flin Flon district.

The geologic sequence at the Tara deposit is similar to rocks that host the Flin Flon, Callinan and 777 mines, he adds, noting that “it appears to be a fold repeat of the horizons that hosted those three mines and produced over 100 million tonnes of ore.”

Tara Lake has only seen four years of exploration, however, and has been tied up in prospectors’ hands for the last 21 years.

“There has been no drilling on the project since 1991, so it has not benefitted from a technical team of our ability to focus on that area,” he says. “From a comparative standpoint, when we started really advancing the Pine Bay project, little work had been completed since 1993. We recognized this as an opportunity to revisit a significant mineral endowment at Pine Bay, and have been quite successful.”

Drill core from Callinex Mines’ Pine Bay project in Manitoba. Credit: Callinex Mines.

Like Pine Bay, which had been explored only briefly by Placer Dome between 1990 and 1993, and by Inmet from 1994–1995, the Tara Lake deposit has seen little prior exploration. Westfield Minerals discovered the deposit and worked on it between 1987 and 1991.

Historic intercepts for Tara Lake from this period include 12.4 metres of 33.9% zinc-equivalent (22.4% zinc, 5.8 grams gold per tonne, 93.6 grams silver per tonne and 0.6% copper) in hole 87-03 at 22 metres deep; 7.4 metres of 35.3% zinc-equivalent (20.3% zinc, 7.2 grams gold, 110.1 grams silver and 1.2% copper) in hole 87-11 from a 24.9 metres deep; and 19.6 metres of 23.8% zinc equivalent (14.6% zinc, 3.1 grams gold, 58.6 grams silver and 1.7% copper) in hole 88-41, starting from 72.1 metres deep.

“Grade is king in my book, and the Tara deposit is extremely high grade.”
Max Porterfield
President and CEO
Callinex Mines

“Grade is king in my book and the Tara deposit is extremely high grade,” Porterfield says. “Those grades speak for themselves. If you look at Hudbay’s 777 mine, the mineralization they mine is near 1,500 metres of vertical depth, and is on average 11% zinc-equivalent.

“At 777, there were two small zones called Dan and Owen. They didn’t have the grades of the Tara deposit, but they followed a down-plunge projection where they eventually found the 777 deposit, 1,278 metres down-hole,” he says.

Porterfield points out that Tara is also close to the Trout Lake deposit, which had over 50 lenses. “The existing Tara deposit is just one lens starting at surface,” he says, adding that “these types of VMS deposits occur as clusters of lenses, so it’s about finding out where these additional lenses are.”

Trout Lake was a great example of that, Porterfield continues. “It was a small, near-surface deposit, and when Hudbay bought the mine and continued exploration, there were 53 lenses and well over 20 million tonnes.”

If you look at Pine Bay, he says, that deposit also has stacked horizon sequences with a large alteration package, and mineralization on each of the horizons.

“We’re exploring in those mineralized horizons at Pine Bay to see if they open up at depth, as is indicated by our most recent intersection of 10.3 metres grading 12.1% zinc-equivalent, at 800 metres deep.”

The company is well versed in the district and equipped to do the exploration, he adds.

A claims map showing Callinex Mines’ properties near Flin Flon, Manitoba. Credit: Callinex Mines.

Mike Muzylowski, chairman of the board and a 2011 inductee into the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame, was involved in discovering 12 VMS-hosted mines in the Flin Flon district — including the Trout Lake mine, which operated from 1982 until 2012 — and Alan Vowles, Callinex’s chief geophysicist, was an integral member of the Hudbay team that found the Lalor deposit, for which he received the PDAC Bill Dennis Prospector of the Year award.

Callinex’s chief geologist, Jim Pickell, is a recipient of the PDAC Bill Dennis Prospector of the Year award for his role in the discovery of the 777 mine, and consulting geologist JJ O’Donnell was instrumental in the exploration and development of the Howard’s Pass zinc project in the Yukon.