Ever been to Sudbury? It’s home of the Big Nickel and was once site of the world largest nickel mine.

Sudbury is located almost exactly 400km north of Toronto, Canada and when I was a little tacker it was an interesting place to visit as it looked like a moonscape due to the damage from nickel mining. Thankfully there was a greening program from the late 1970’s which ran for almost 3 decades. 

The Sudbury Basin was created by the impact of a 10 km meteorite, forming one of the largest impact sites on earth. The crater filled with magma containing nickel, copper, palladium, and gold.

Interesting, but why are you telling us that?

Aston Minerals, prospecting gold on their Edleston tenement, at the very northern fringes of the basin, has stumbled onto thick zones of nickel mineralisation during drilling.

Not only was the mineralisation shallow it was in relatively high percentages, in the vicinity of 0.5%. It should be noted these were from only a small number of drills and the reported nickel sulphides were from handheld XRF machines, not in a lab.

Aston executive chairman Tolga Kumova said in a recent Small Caps podcast the scale and tenor of the mineralisation was comparable to other globally significant nickel operations such as BHP Mt Keith mine near Kalgoorlie.

Kumova also said the company had a high degree of confidence in the target’s potential, but which mining chair would not say that.

In the same interview Kumova also espoused the virtues of mining operations in Canada including skilled workforce, inexpensive power, and proximity to market. 

While the shares have already rallied around 50% on the initial reports, it will be one to watch if lab assayed drill results continue to show strong results. 

Small Caps podcast: https://webplayer.whooshkaa.com/show/10156?episode=948541