Nicola Mining (NIM.V): You can’t make a copper mine sound interesting, they said.. Let’s see

Our sales guy was having a rough day. Markets down, and for quite some time. Lots of companies on their third month of saying, “maybe in a couple of weeks.”

So when the email landed in his inbox from Nicola Mining (NIM.V) saying ‘maybe’, and tossing a load of information at him in a test to see if our creative guys could interpret it all well, Terry took a deep breath and bounced the dozens of pages and videos to me.

“They want to know if you have the chops to take a complex story and make it interesting,” he said. “They’d like a proposal breaking it all down.”

Well, with respect, to heck with that. If I’m going to do the research, and I’m going to analyse the business plan, and go through the numbers, and break down geological terminology, we may as well just show the world what we can do rather than hide it all in a sales email.

So come along for a ride with me, sweet reader, as I take on the challenge of making a copper project interesting.

Not for technical mining guys, they’ll be fine reading news releases, but for everyone else.

• For the Minecraft player looking to move from video game mining to the real stuff;
• For the teenage girl who’s just about to start her first portfolio;
• For the daytrader who is sick of getting wiped out and wants to be able to sleep at night;
• For the environmentalist who knows we *have* to mine things, but would prefer we do so efficiently and carefully and make use of what’s already dug up;
• And for the ones who have no interest in mining at all but have a few minutes to read and think, what the hell, give it your best shot, Parry.

THE ORIGIN STORY

The tale of the New Craigmont Mine is a saga of transformation and renewal over 65 years.

Oh sure, we could go back a few hundred million years earlier, to when lava first started pushing through rock and messing with its chemistry, but let’s fast forward and focus on what’s happened since people walked over it and noticed enough shiny stuff to warrant digging for more.

Nestled 14 kilometers from Merritt in British Columbia, the original Craigmont Copper Mine was started by lawyer Neil McDiarmid.

McDiarmid was a dreamer, and his notion didn’t pay off immediately. A fly-over and the first two drill programs found little but dust, but McDiarmid opted to take one last shot and found what he was looking for on the third hole.

Not much, mind you. The ore grade wasn’t rich enough to warrant a mine, but it was enough to keep optimists optimistic and wives from moving back to mother. By hole seven, the crew had gone deep enough to find the grade they needed to warrant a trip to the bank.

Four years later and with $18 million spent on getting ready for production, the mine would begin sending copper concentrates to the US and Japan.

If you know the bustling modern regional centre of Merritt BC, and I do, you should know that before the Craigmont happened, there was only 1500 people in the burg. Today it’s a decent sized city, dwarfed provincially only be nearby Kelowna to the east and Vancouver over the mountains to the west.

At its peak, this is what the Craigmont looked like, as it pumped 426 million kilograms of copper into the world, and made shareholders $104 million in dividends:

When the Craigmont was well underway, it was a thing of beauty; a hub of industry and jobs and region building and families, and when equipment didn’t exist to get to the depths needed, the company simply designed and built its own, advancing mining technology decades.

But in 1982, with copper prices languishing at $0.60 per pound, the Craigmont Mine executive and ownership team took a hard decision that was felt by the entire region – to cease its operations and dismantle the facility. It wasn’t exactly swallowed by nature, but it remains a notable piece of landscape.

They wouldn’t be the last to try to squeeze copper out of the ground. For years thereafter, a series of companies and individuals bought and sold parts of the land package, but the fragmented ownership of the mineral claims around the former Craigmont Mine stifled any coordinated exploration attempts.

THE REBIRTH:

That was until Nicola Mining rose to the occasion.

In November 2015, after years of disparate management, Nicola achieved what had once seemed a herculean task: the consolidation of ownership over the wide number of mineral claims and mining leases that now make up the New Craigmont Project.

Energized by this unification, Nicola initiated a new era of exploration with vigor and precision. Under Nicola’s stewardship, the ‘New Craigmont Project’ swelled to encompass 10,913 hectares of mineral claims, and with ownership consolidated and historical data in hand, Nicola embarked on a multifaceted exploration crusade on the New Craigmont Project.

They bore into the earth, extracting 10,498 meters of diamond drilling core samples, and dove further with 1,869 meters of reverse circular drilling. The soil of the project surrendered its secrets through extensive sampling, while induced polarization and ground magnetic surveys peeled back the layers of the unseen, and property scale mapping redefined the boundaries of potential.

The fruits of these labors were not meager. Copper gleamed amidst the core samples:

• DDH- THU-002 presented an 85.92-meter interval of 1.11% copper content.
• S-100 unfurled 116.7 meters grading 0.54% copper.
• NC-2018-01 revealed 71.4 meters at 0.6% copper.
• NC-2018-03 boasted 100.6 meters at a rich 1.33% copper.
• CC-18-02 and CC-19-72 displayed significant copper equivalency grades across extensive intervals.

In partnership with the academic and research community, Nicola Mining and the University of British Columbia’s Mineral Deposit Research Unit embarked on a collaborative journey in June 2022 to explore the potential of copper porphyry systems beneath the terrain.

As the seasons changed, Nicola heralded the completion of a district-wide airborne geophysical survey in September of the same year. This advanced ZTEM survey brought to light the electrical conductive signatures that matched the known mineral occurrences in the district, paving the way for more targeted explorations.

The capstone of this journey came with the granting of a multi-year area-based exploration permit in November 2022. This permit was a key to unlock a trove of exploration activities including further geophysical surveys, the drilling of 190 diamond drill holes, and extensive trenching and bulk sampling.

Finally, in May 2023, the path for the year’s diamond drilling exploration was charted, and Nicola Mining marched forth under the auspices of their hard-earned MYAB Permit. The New Craigmont Project, once a patchwork of claims and memories and ups and downs, now stands ready to send its metals to the world once more—a testament to the enduring allure of the mineral-rich earth and the tenacity of those who seek its treasures.

And as for copper prices, today they’re at $3.73 per pound, with supply expected to be squeezed in the years ahead as demand surges.

But here’s the thing: that’s not it.

WHAT ELSE DOES NICOLA HAVE?

Yes, the creaking to life of one of BC’s greatest resource-based industrial treasures is a thing of beauty, but there’s more to Nicola Mining than one project … even if that project is a sprawling, giant, bastard of a project that has already made the province wealthy once.

• The company also holds 100% ownership of the high-grade Treasure Mountain Silver Mine, also in BC and not far from the Craiger;
• The company has also commenced gold concentrate under a profit share agreement and production activity with Osisko Development, as of January of 2023;
• They’ve also executed a definitive agreement to acquire a 50% ownership and 75% economic interest in the high-grade Dominion Gold Creek Project and commenced work in Q3 of 2023.

To summarize; Nicola has this stonking great behemoth of copper that they’re advancing, they have cash flow coming in from their gold project, they have a silver project in their pocket, and another gold project on the move.

WHAT ELSE?

• Signed non-dilutive Letter of Intent for a partnership with Nittetsu Mining Co. Ltd. for the Craigmont Project ($25.0 MM at a $62.5 MM evaluation at project level)

What’s that? Again in English?

Nittetsu Mining of Japan, one of that country’s great resource companies, has signed a letter of intent to joint venture with Nicola, whereby they would engage in $25 million worth of work on the project in return for 40% of it. This allows Nicola to get the mine advanced quickly, without coughing up equity in the business and diluting existing shareholders, and though they lose 40% of the project in doing so, that would see The New Craigmont presumably move to production years faster. If the goal is to de-risk it, they’ve gone a long way to doing so.

To be sure, bringing in a power hitter to get this mine moving along is a master stroke. If Nittetsu see the sort of results that are expected, they can get it to production way faster than Nicola could by itself, and the other cash generating projects Nicola owns can ensure they don’tget bigfooted off the property in desperation for walking around money, or taken out at a low price.

There’s a HECK of a lot more to like about Nicola than what we’ve mentioned, but that’s not what we started out doing here.

We set out to turn a copper mine into an interesting story.

Mission accomplished.

— Chris Parry

FULL DISCLOSURE: Nicola Mining is not an Equity.Guru marketing client – yet – but we think they’ll enjoy working with us. Either way, respect for what they have their hands on. Not many junior miners sit on legitimate Canadian history, a history that had been shredded and scattered to the winds, only to have the wherewithall to put all the pieces back together again.