Paul Riss, CEO of Fortune Nickel and Gold, explains how the company is well-positioned to provide the minerals to meet the demands of Canada’s electric vehicle market.
Fortune Nickel and Gold is a mineral exploration company, primarily focused on the Timmins Nickel District in Ontario, Canada. The company’s work is centred around delivering class one nickel to meet the demands of Canada’s electric vehicle (EV) market. At this stage, the company has received exploration permits to drill in the townships of Gowan, Beck, Ottaway, and Lennox.
To find out more about the company’s recent progress and future plans, The Innovation Platform spoke with CEO Paul Riss.
Can you tell us more about Fortune Nickel and Gold and your current focuses?
Clean energy transitions that focus on the demand for critical minerals, such as copper (Cu), lithium (Li), nickel (Ni), and cobalt (Co), are projected to create a significant increase in demand for minerals. The International Energy Agency (IEA) states that: “It is essential to ensure diverse, resilient, and secure clean energy supply chains, including for critical minerals.”
We are focusing on critical minerals to power Canada’s electric vehicle market, where we believe we have a government-friendly environment that will contribute to a resilient and secure supply of nickel and copper. Our geologists have mapped out several areas within the 9,000 acres in which we own the mineral rights in the Timmins nickel district, for us to discover significant deposits of nickel, copper, and zinc.
How are you supporting the growth of Canada’s electric vehicle market?
We are working to advance our properties from initial resource to a construction-ready project. We have been diligent with project financing, capital structuring, internal controls, and financial reporting. We take steps to limit shareholder dilution in the accomplishment of our goals, and we are holding equity securities in other public companies that we intend to sell to help finance exploration activities that will build Canada’s electric vehicle market.
What are your current mineral rights and why are these exciting prospects?
We own mineral rights to 180 claims, which are in the townships of Gowan, Lennox, Ottaway, and Beck.
Our properties show enormous potential for critical minerals. Our Canadian experts and advisory group tell us we can expect a significant amount of gold in our properties, but that there is such overwhelming evidence of nickel, copper, and zinc (Zn) that we should target the battery metals first. We plan to advance a high-quality nickel-sulfide project and we love that we are positioned near North American car manufacturers that continue to expand their search for nickel sources and expand Canada’s electric vehicle market.
We are also approximately ten miles away from the Crawford project, which boasts a preliminary economic assessment of $1.3bn. We are pleased to see that they are consolidating a large-scale open-pit nickel sulfide project with the potential for zero-carbon production that is so close to our properties.
Nickel sulfide discoveries have been acquired at significant valuations. We are fortunate to be operating in a well-established mining jurisdiction with significant infrastructure in place, and a supportive government.
Reverse circulation overburden drilling was carried out from 1973-1974 on our property and the bore hole (FH-68) yielded impressive, high-grade assays with intersection of 27ft at 3.5% Ni and 1.25% Cu from millerite-bearing, basal till samples.
Subsequent diamond drilling in 1975 reported several anomalous base and precious metal (Cu-Zn-Au-Ag) zones. The mineralisation appears to be contained in a NE-SW trend shears with 9.4m intercept of semi-massive to disseminated pyrite and chalcopyrite, hosted at the contact of an altered ultramafic rocks and porphyritic felsic intrusion (rhyolite). Assays from this same interval returned 0.30% Cu and 10.6 g/t silver (Ag). Better grade mineralisation of 0.68% Cu was returned over 3.8 m and 0.95% Cu over 1m.
The Timmins Camp has a long history of nickel production from komatiite-associated Ni-Cu (PGE) deposits. Several of these deposit types have been identified within specific lithostratigraphic assemblage in AGB, including Deloro assemblage (Crawford), the Tisdale Assemblage (Langmuir, Redstone), and the Kidd-Munro sequence (Alexo, Dundonald), including the world-class Kidd Creek Volcanogenic Massive Sulfide deposit. The Gowan property is part of the Kidd-Munro Assemblage.
To complement the Gowan project, we own several mineral claims in the townships of Beck, Ottaway, and Lennox.
The linear conductor at Block B (see righthand figure) is potentially gold+/-base metal targets within the volcanics at the north-central portion of the property. The anomalies within the areas of Block A and Block C consist of Crawford-style nickel sulfides within the mafic-ultramafic complex. The sub-surface geology at the Beck-Ottaway property can support deposition of nickel and gold+/-base metal vein deposits.
What have you achieved in 2023 so far and what do you plan to achieve before the end of the year?
We have hired Axiom Exploration Group Ltd. of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to work with us and we plan to demonstrate to the capital markets the value of our properties. Our stock is trading at a low price and we believe our market cap is significantly undervalued. Throughout most of the past year, our market capitalisation was less than our book value. We trade under the ticker symbol HTSC (Here To Serve Corporation) as a ‘pink current information’ issuer, and we have a PCAOB audit every year.
We brought in Axiom’s environmentally-friendly satellite radar technology to enhance and further help expand our drill targets. By combining modern remote sensing techniques using multispectral imaging and synthetic aperture radar to analyse vegetation, structure, alteration, and ground movement, complex anomalies covering large areas can be quickly and effectively identified. Axiom uses proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to process this multivariate exploration approach, combining existing geological, geochemical, and geophysical data with multiple satellite analyses, to identify mineral targets.
With Axiom’s guidance we seek to drill in the Gowan NiCu project area and uncover the area where our historical drill hole shows 3.5% nickel sulfide.
Please note, this article will also appear in the fifteenth edition of our quarterly publication.
