Junior miner to open Sudbury operation

“We are very excited by the prospect of starting the company's first mining project in Sudbury,” Wallbridge president and CEO Marz Kord said in a news release. “Based on the results of the 2011 bulk sample and the 2012 prefeasibility study, as well as the contract mining and milling and smelting terms which have now been secured, the Broken Hammer project has the potential to not only generate positive cash flow in the near future, but is also open at depth and to the west leaving the possibility of extending its mine life.”

The Broken Hammer project is an open-pit operation which will be used to extract approximately 195,000 tonnes of in-pit copper, nickel and platinum group elements using the services of William Day Construction Ltd., a local mining contractor. The ore will be transported to Northern Sun's Redstone facility in Timmins and then to a local copper smelter for further processing.

The processing agreement with Northern Sun is expected to be finalized this week, and the construction and subsequent production is expected to start in April. The open-pit mining is expected to be completed within 10 to 12 months at an average daily rate of approximately 800 tonnes of ore per day.

At the projected extraction rate, the mine would have a lifespan of around 244 days.

Broken Hammer has an indicated reserve of 259,500 tonnes, grading 0.88 per cent copper, 0.1 per cent nickel, 2.32 g/t platinum, 2.1 g/t palladium, 0.77 g/t gold and 6.95 g/t silver.

The company also plans to conduct exploration activities in 2014 on its Wisner properties, which surround the Broken Hammer deposit. Geophysics and drilling have already been initiated on those sites.