With strong global demand for copper, Sudbury-based Magna Mining says it quickly raised the money it was looking for to develop a promising ore body at the former Levack Mine. Magna is already mining McCreedy West, with a focus on copper production as nickel prices stay persistently low. Magna purchased McCreedy West, Levack and other mining properties from KGHM International Ltd. a year ago. In turn, KGHM bought the properties from Quadra FNX in March 2012. Earlier this month, Magna announced a private sale of shares to raise $45 million, with options to raise an additional $5 million. CEO Jason Jessup said the shares were snapped up quickly. “So that was very well received -- we were able to overfill the book,” Jessup said in an interview with CTV News on Wednesday. With shares trading at $2.78, Jessup said the private sale at $2.40 a share was viewed as a bargain by investors. “So it was at a discount,” he said. “People looked at that quite favorably, which again is, you know, one of the reasons that people want to participate, they can buy cheaper in the deal than they can in the market.” Magna Mining produces copper, nickel and platinum group metals. While the company’s primary asset is the McCreedy West, Magna also owns Levack, Crean Hill, Podolsky and Shakespeare mines. First on the list is Levack, where drilling samples have shown promising results. Jessup said it was a productive mine until it was put into care and maintenance in 2019. “We are in the process of exploration (and) we’ve come up with some really exciting drill results,” said Jessup, who used to work for FNX and knows the properties well. Not just copper “We’ll be using these funds for exploration and for looking at restarting this operation as early as 2026.” While the focus is copper, Jessup said there is also nickel, platinum, gold and silver that could be mined when market conditions are right. “We are really focused on copper right now, but there’s also a lot of precious metals,” he said. “At Levack, (we) had almost an ounce per tonne of gold as well as very high copper.” Magna currently has 180 workers in the Sudbury area, and could add as many as another 150-200 jobs if efforts are successful to bring Levack back into production. Adding jobs “That would include both employees and some contractors,” Jessup said. “That’s a meaningful number of good-paying jobs.” While Levack was in production for 100 years, he said their drilling results are promising for significant discoveries of new ore bodies. Drilling results released in late August were particularly exciting, he added, in areas he described as very accessible. “We released some drill holes on Aug. 28 and these intersections (were) some of the highest-grade copper and precious metal intersections that I’ve ever seen in Sudbury,” Jessup said. “So that’s an exciting part to this story and I think it’s going to be really key over the next number of months.”
