Fathom Nickel is targeting high-grade nickel deposits for use in the ever-growing electric vehicle market.
Fathom Nickel (FNI:CSE; FNICF:OTC; 6Q5:FSE) is a publicly traded resource exploration and development company with prospective nickel projects in Saskatchewan, Canada.
The company’s management team boasts over 100 years of combined mining and exploration experience, making it poised to become a leader in the global battery metals market.
Fathom’s vision is to find and advance high-grade nickel sulphide deposits, acquire strategic assets that fit the corporate mandate, and become a leader in the Canadian nickel exploration industry.
Fathom believes in a continuing bright outlook for nickel and its increasing use in the manufacturing of batteries needed for energy storage in the high-growth renewable energy and electric vehicle industries.
Since 2015, the Company has advanced the 100% owned Albert Lake project and is now undertaking other crucial work at the Gochager Lake nickel project.
Nickel’s crucial role in the electric vehicle market
Nickel’s annual traded value sits at a staggering $35bn. With this in mind, nickel demand is projected to rise due to its intensive use in lithium-ion batteries to power electric vehicles.
Over the next ten years, the EV market is projected to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 29%.
However, the discovery of new nickel deposits to power this growth has so far been scarce, which could constrain class 1 nickel supply in the coming years.
This is where Fathom Nickel comes in. The company’s two prospective projects can help meet shortages in the industry and secure nickel’s role as a top material in electric vehicle batteries.
The Albert Lake project
The Albert Lake nickel project consists of 90,460 hectares located in Saskatchewan, Canada. To date exploration efforts have focused on approximately 10,000 hectares leaving over 80,000 hectares of the project unexplored.
Albert Lake hosts the historic Rottenstone Mine, a high-grade, open pit nickel past producer (1965 to 1969) with an average grade of 3.23% Ni.
The mineralisation of the historic Rottenstone deposit is unique and contains several notable associated metals.
Sample metallurgy also showed favourable metal recoveries of greater than 90%. These included Ni, Cu, Co, and >80% Pd-Pt.
The geological setting of the Alberta Lake Project is in the Trans Hudson Corridor, which is host to numerous world-class nickel deposits, including:
- Thompson Nickel Belt (operating, over five billion pounds of nickel produced since 1959);
- Lynn Lake (past producer); and
- The Raglan Nickel Belt (operating, over 39,000 tonnes of nickel produced in 2020).
The Gochager Lake nickel deposit
The Gochager Lake project is host to the historic Gochager Lake nickel deposit and consists of 22,620 hectares in north-central Saskatchewan, approximately 75 km north of the town of La Ronge.
This nickel deposit has undergone several historical resource estimates, which were carried out in 1968 and 1990.
The 1968 study estimated 4.3m tonnes at 0.30% Ni and 0.08% Cu, which contained a higher-grade zone with reasonably well-defined limits, containing 1.8 million tonnes at 0.735% Ni equivalent. Fathom drillhole GL23003 intersected 2.43% Ni, 0.51% Cu and 0.18% Co, 0.06 g/t Pd-Pt+Au / 18.10 meters within the higher-grade section of the nickel deposit.
Fathom Nickel’s second round of drilling at the Gochager Lake nickel deposit commenced on 2 September 2023. The drill programme is expected to consist of five to six drill holes totalling approximately 1,800-2,000 metres.
The programme’s primary purpose is to test the vertical plunge extensions along the strike of the very favourable drill results intersected in February 2023. Multiple borehole electromagnetic (BHEM) surveys within this area of high-grade nickel mineralisation have defined a complex set of steeply plunging geophysical targets.
