Canada Nickel executive to speak to Sudbury Chamber this week about its Crawford deposit near Timmins

TIMMINS — Canada Nickel is continuing with its plans to develop a large nickel mine near Timmins.

The Crawford deposit is located on Highway 655, near Highway 11, about 40 kilometres north of Timmins.

Company officials call it an exciting nickel discovery and there are big plans underway to develop it to help feed the growing electric vehicle market.

The company’s chief executive officer told CTV News that Timmins stands a chance of being part of one of the greatest industrial shifts in the past century.

“The fact that in a very short period of time, we have one of the ... largest nickel sulphide resources in the world globally, we still have a lot of exploration potential to go so we’ll see how far up that list we go and I’ve been joking that we may need to move the big nickel from Sudbury up to Timmins,” said Mark Selby.

Last month, Canada Nickel signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Glencore for potential use of the Kidd concentrator and metallurgical site for treatment and processing of the nickel-cobalt sulphide project.

"We need to understand, can we repurpose the Kidd Creek mill to process some of our material and that work’s ongoing right now," said Selby. "The second part is understanding how our tailings could help with the tailings facility that’s there."

With the project showing so much potential, the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce is interested in it as well.  It’s hosting a virtual luncheon on Feb. 9th, with Selby as the guest speaker.

“Anything close to home for us is great,” said Cora DeMarco, chair of the board of directors for the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce.  “We’re part of a hub that encompasses all of northern Ontario. So a project that’s successful for a region within northern Ontario certainly hits the mark across the entire north as we know our mining service and supply group touches as far north as James Bay.”

Canada Nickel projects it’ll be one of the world’s first to produce zero carbon nickel cobalt and iron.