Rockcliff Metals Corporation said in a press release April 6 that it is preparing a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) of its Tower and Rail projects to get an idea of their value, the capital it will take to get them producing and how long that process will take.
The company is wrapping up a winter drilling program at the two sites.
The Rail project is located about 185 kilometres from the Bucko Mill and tailings storage facility near Wabowden that Rockcliff controls through a seven-year lease agreement with CANickel Mining. Rockcliff says there is an indicated resource of 800,000 tonnes of ore with 3.04 per cent copper.
The Tower project is about 130 kilometres from the Bucko Mill and has an indicated mineral resource of 1.08 million tonnes with 3.73 per cent copper in a deposit associated with a 12-kilometre long copper corridor.
“We’re very excited that we’ve got this far with some very impressive drill results,” said Rockcliff CEO Alistair Ross, a former head of North Atlantic Mining Operations with Vale, in a video update posted on YouTube April 6. He said drilling that is just wrapping up resulted in a healthy upgrade to the resource base at the Rail project and that Tower’s grade “has risen incredibly well.”
Rockcliff hopes to begin further operations on the projects near the end of May, depending upon whether the COVID-19 is still impacting Canada, Ontario and Manitoba by that time.
“It’s not clear that we’ll be able to start up in May,” Ross said in the video. “In an upcoming natural break between winter and summer we're going to take roughly six to eight weeks while winter breakup occurs before we can set up on our summer sites.”
Based on the results of the PEA of the two projects, Rockcliff will decide whether it wants to develop Tower first and then Rail or vice versa.
The Bucko Mill was initially designed for nickel but would be redeveloped into a copper processing mill in the short term if development of the Rail and Tower projects proceed.
Rockcliff has also earned a 51 per cent interest from Hudbay in the Talbot Property about 50 kilometres north of Grand Rapids. That project has an inferred mineral resource of 4.2 million tonnes at 1.6 per cent copper and the company says it plans to complete a PEA for the property by the second quarter of this year.
