Palladium One (PDM) - Moving Forward with High-Grade Copper & Nickel

Palladium One Mining Inc. is an exploration stage, critical minerals company with assets in both Finland and North America. The company aims to position itself to be a part of the critical mineral sector. The Tyko project of the company is a copper, nickel and cobalt project located in Northwestern Ontario, 25 km north of the Hemlo mining complex and holds a land position of 243 km2.

The Läntinen Koillismaa (LK) project of the company is a palladium-dominant platinum group elements, copper and nickel project located in north-central Finland, approximately 40 km north of the town of Taivalkoski. The LK project holds a land position of 1,485.3 hectares and consists of various exploration permits.

The company announced at the end of August 2022 that it had received a new exploration permit for the Smoke Lake zone of the Tyko project. The permit enabled a drill rig to be mobilised to the zone with its aim being expanding the zone’s high-grade copper and nickel mineralization as well as testing previously identified IP chargeability targets. Palladium One Mining Inc. also mobilised a helicopter-based drill rig at the RJ and Tyko zones of the project with the primary focus of drilling a 400 m BHEM platform hole at each zone. The BHEM platform hole will enable the testing for buried massive sulphide mineralisation below the detection limit depth of the previously conducted VTEMmax survey.

Palladium One Mining Inc. on the 7th September 2022 announced the discovery of a new high-grade nickel-sulphide zone at the West Pickle zone of the Tyko project. The company intercepted 5.5 m of nickel-copper sulphide mineralization, which included a 1.75 m massive to a semi-massive zone of nickel-copper sulphide at a depth of 140 m at the zone. The newly identified zone lies 20 km to the east of the Smoke Lake zone. The discovery of a second high-grade zone results in the Tyko project now being regarded as a district-scale sulphide nickel opportunity.

New Discovery and activities

Derrick Weyrauch, the president and CEO of Palladium One Mining Inc. explains the company’s recent discovery as the second in 18 months, with the zone showing the same mineralisation as the project’s Smoke Lake zone.

“This is the second discovery on the property in less than 18 months. It's on the far-western edge of the property, in the zone we're calling West Pickle, about 20 km away from the original discovery of Smoke Lake on the eastern side of the property. The Smoke Lake rocks look identical to what we announced recently at West Pickle, although at West Pickle we do not have assay results back yet. They'll be coming out in due course, but the rocks look basically the same. We had a tremendously high grade at Smoke Lake and we're expecting the same at West Pickle.”

The newly discovered high-grade nickel-sulphide zone at the West Pickle zone of the Tyko includes the company intercepting 5.5 m of nickel-copper sulphide mineralization, which included a 1.75 m massive to a semi-massive zone of nickel-copper sulphide at a depth of 140 m at the zone. The discovery of a second high-grade zone results in the Tyko project now being regarded as a district-scale sulphide nickel opportunity.

The current market is challenging for various junior mining companies. Weyrauch explains however that as previously experienced, this cycle will eventually experience an upswing. Palladium One Mining Inc. in December 2021 raised approximately CAD$ 4.35 million in flow-through funding, with the aim of the funds being to advance its Tyko project. Weyrauch explains the current market is not favourable, but that the company is well funded to see through the cycle and advance its projects.

“From a macro perspective, we're in a pretty awful cycle right now, but cycles come and go, and you have to work through it. In Ontario, we have ample funding for this year. We started with about CAD$ 5 million worth of flow-through funding dedicated just to the Tyko project, and we're investing that in the project. We started drilling about 2-3 months ago, and we'll be drilling for the balance of the year. That money came about as a result of flow-through funding that we did in late 2021. Legally, the requirement is that we invest the money over the course of this year, so we'll be doing that. More holistically, from a company perspective, you have to be cautious at these times of the cycle and you still need to move projects forward.”

Palladium One Mining however is aware to carefully spend its funds through the current market cycle according to Weyrauch. He explains that even though the flow-through capital serves as a good working expense, the allocation of funds is done in such a way that it delivers value to the company.

“We're very happy that we can do that with the money we have and the activities we're doing at Tyko, but we're husbanding to some degree the other funding that we have, what we refer to as the hard dollar, in order to work our way through this cycle. We're spending the money on what we believe are very accretive activities, maybe they're not as expensive as drilling, but highly accretive, such as permitting activities and technical assessments of delivering a project.”

The allocation of funds for any junior mining company in the current market is to be done conscientiously according to Weyrauch, with a balance between advancing a project and also having funds available to weather the storm. The last thing a company would want, according to Weyrach, is to be in a situation where it is in a low cash position without the ability to raise funds.

“It's a balanced approach. At the end of the day, you have to make a judgement call as to how much of a runway you need and how long the cycle is going to last, because you don't want to find yourself in a position where you're running on vapours with regards to cash and you're going to be in a very weak position or not even able to raise capital to build up the treasury again, depending on what the market conditions are at the time.”

Exploration targets

Palladium One Mining Inc. plans to further its Tyko project through the exploration of various targets going forward. Weyrauch explains that the company has received 4 of its 6 exploration permits and that it has identified and aims to explore various targets at the project.

“We applied for 6 permits. We've received 4 permits, which are for different zones on the property, largely where we had multi-line VTM anomalies or electromagnetic anomalies, that we subsequently ground through with soil sampling and anomalous values of copper, nickel and cobalt. There are a number of different zones that we will be testing initially in the first rounds. Certainly, with what we've seen at West Pickle and the fact that it's only about 3km away from a zone called RJ, which has a very good historical intercept from 2016 of approximately 16 m of over 1% nickel, and it is quite shallow as well.”

Palladium One Mining Inc. announced at the end of August 2022, that it had mobilised a helicopter-based drill rig to conduct a four-week exploration program. The exploration program is aimed at the RJ and Tyko zones of the Tyko project, which have previously shown mineralisation of up to 1.04% Ni over 16.2 m as well as 0.93% Ni over 15.9 m. The primary aim of the exploration initiatives according to the company is to drill a 400 m deep BHEM platform hole at each zone to test for buried massive sulphide mineralisation below the detection limit of the previously conducted VTEMmax survey. The helicopter-based rig will also test nearby remote magnetic and single-line VTEMmax anomalies, which cannot be accessed from existing logging roads.

LK project update

The Läntinen Koillismaa (LK) project of the company is a palladium-dominant, platinum group elements, copper and nickel project located in north-central Finland, approximately 40 km north of the town of Taivalkoski. The LK project holds a land position of 1,485.3 hectares and consists of various exploration permits.

Palladium One Mining Inc. in April 2022 announced the mineral resource estimate (MRE) of the LK project. The MRE includes 1.1 million ounces of total precious metals (palladium, platinum and gold), 111 million pounds of copper, 92 million pounds of nickel, and 5 million pounds of cobalt in the Indicated category. The Inferred resources included in the MRE are 1.1 million ounces of total precious metals, 173 million pounds of copper, 152 million pounds of nickel and 8 million pounds of cobalt. Palladium One Mining Inc. is underway with various technical studies on the LK project, with it having concluded most of the permitting work of the project.

“We've largely done the bulk of the baseline permitting work, we still have to do the hydrological model and put in the groundwater monitoring, we have deferred that given the market conditions, but that's something that we can do fairly quickly. The scoping study is underway. We were initially looking at doing a full-blown PEA, costing it all out and getting it out into the market, but given the inflation and uncertainty, it really doesn't make sense to go and spend that money at this point in time. Thus, the focus now is really on the technical aspects of it.”

The technical aspects of the project which are referred to by Weyrauch include amongst others the location of the waste dumps and the processing plant, the identification of possible water management issues and the evaluation of dry stack tailings. Palladium One Mining Inc. however believes that the work will be completed by the end of the fourth quarter of 2022.

Way forward

Palladium One Mining Inc. does not plan to raise funds in the near future. The company is financially secure to operate for quite some time according to Weyrauch. The company will focus its initiatives on advancing its projects rather than raising funds. Weyrauch however also notes that should there be an opportunistic time, the company may consider raising funds.

“What we're seeing in Canada is that the flow-through funds are getting cash again, so they're knocking on the door and want to have conversations with companies that are active and getting news flow out there and potentially doing some finance things. We are in the enviable position that we have a lot of cash on the balance sheet and we have some optionality, so we do not need to finance. We would want to be opportunistic if we do, but we've got a long runway so we're in pretty good shape.”

The company is also in contact with various potential and existing institutional investors according to Weyrauch, with it aiming to keep the market up to date with its activities.

“We are engaging with new potential institutional shareholders. and talking to some of our existing shareholder base. A large part of our outstanding shares is held by institutions, my best guess is 50% to 55%. Unfortunately, you can't have the same visibility as you have on the ASX. It's a huge amount of stock, and there is a number of people there that we need to keep current in terms of our activities or touching base with those folks”

To find out more, go to the Palladium One website