26 April 2022
Toronto, April 25, 2022 – Canadian North Resources Inc. (“the Company”, TSXV: CNRI) is pleased to announce that it has budgeted $11 million for the exploration plan at the Ferguson Lake nickel, copper, cobalt, palladium and platinum project (“the Ferguson Lake Project”), which will include a resource estimation (ref. the news release on April 11, 2022), a 15,000-meter diamond drilling program (ref. the news release on April 19, 2022), in-hole geophysical survey, surface geological mapping and geophysical survey, and metallurgical testing.
The exploration plan is based on extensive review of the geology and historic drill results (refer to Chart 1 and Chart 2 below) of the Ferguson Lake Project by the Company. The mineralization includes mainly two styles: the massive sulfides containing base metals (nickel, copper and cobalt) and platinum-group metals (“PGM”, mainly palladium and platinum), and low-sulfide material containing low base metals but highgrade PGM. The massive sulfides vary from a meter to tens of meters thick (e.g., 45.9-meter core length at 1.34% copper, 0.76% nickel, 1.99g/t palladium and 0.32g/t platinum, refer to Chart 2 below), which was the target of historic exploration. The low-sulfide and high-grade PGM mineralization (up to 103g/t palladium, 43.3g/t platinum, 2.58g/t rhodium, refer to Chart 1 below) was intersected extensively from surface to a depth of over 1,200 meters and remains open laterally and down dip. The present exploration plan focuses on the expansion of the massive sulfides targets and the delineation of potential economic resources in the high-grade PGM low-sulfide bodies.
Historic metallurgical tests were conducted on massive sulfide samples and only recovered copper, nickel and cobalt, not palladium or platinum. The Company has conducted initial metallurgical tests for the recoveries of base metals and PGM from massive sulfides, which indicated high recoveries of base metals (87-99%) and PGM (90-95%) (ref. NI43-101 Technical Report dated July 18, 2022, filed on Sedar.com or www.cnresources.com). More metallurgical tests will be carried out for both massive sulfides and highgrade PGM low-sulfide samples.
“The geology and mineralization of the Ferguson Lake Project may be comparable with the Norilsk mining area of Russia, one of the world most productive area for nickel, copper, palladium and platinum.” said Dr. Kaihui Yang, the President & CEO, “Our exploration plan is to expand the massive sulfide zones for potential high-grade large-tonnage economic base metal and PGM resources and to explore the untapped potential of the extensive low-sulfide and high-grade PGM mineralization at the Ferguson Lake Project.”
Some of the historic assay results from selected core intersections of high-grade PGM low-sulfide zone and massive sulfides bodies include:
Chart 1: selected high-grade palladium and platinum low-sulfide intersections:
See full release for chart details.