Nickel King Boosts Strongbow Shares

A metallurgical study on the main zone of Strongbow Exploration’s (SBW-V, SBWFF-O) Nickel King project in Canada’s Northwest Territories confirms a 78.4% recovery rate into a 16.5% nickel concentrate.

Testing has forecast that the grade of final concentrate will likely be 16.5% for nickel, 4.2% for copper and 0.74% cobalt, with recoveries of 78.4%, 89.1% and 63.5%, respectively.

Nickel King is about 550 km southeast of Yellowknife and 145 km northeast of Stony Rapids, Sask. The property lies within Precambrian- age rocks along the Snowbird tectonic zone, a crustal-scale structure marking the boundary between the Hearne and Rae domains of the Archean Churchill province.

David Gale, Strongbow’s vice-president exploration said in a statement that the results of the-metallurgical study confirmed that the deposit’s main zone has “the potential to produce a saleable concentrate that would be attractive to domestic and foreign consumers.”

The study was conducted on a 120-kg composite sample from the lower sill of the main zone, collected from 2008 drill-hole NK08-36, and had an average total nickel content of 0.65%.

A series of tests determined that 88.9% of the contained nickel is associated with pentlandite, 9.1% is associated with pyrrhotite and the remaining 2% occurs within silicate minerals, primarily orthopyroxene.

Using a preliminary flow sheet that was developed based on optimum conditions defined from a series of six batch rougher flotation tests and four batch cleaner tests, a locked cycle test was performed using six 2-kg charges.

“Mineralization within the upper and lower sills of the main zone has shown excellent continuity over a strike length in excess of 2.5 km and remains open in both directions along strike and also in the updip and downdip directions,” Gale said.

A recently filed technical report stated a metallurgical study was a critical next step in advancing the project.

According to a February 2009 resource estimate for the main zone deposit, at a 0.2% nickel cutoff base case, the compliant geological resource model yielded 11.1 million tonnes grading 0.4% nickel, 0.1% copper and 0.018% cobalt for total contained nickel of 97.7 million lbs., 23.5 million lbs. copper and 4.4 million lbs. cobalt in the indicated category.

The total inferred resource tallied 33.1 million tonnes grading 0.36% nickel, 0.09% copper and 0.017% cobalt for 262.4 million lbs. nickel, 63.9 million lbs. copper and 12.3 million lbs. cobalt.

Strongbow recently traded at about 18¢ per share in a 52-week trading range of 2-29¢. The company has 66.1 million shares outstanding.