North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Wellgreen Platinum Ltd. June 26 reported a roughly 10 percent increase in the measured and indicated resources at its Wellgreen nickel-platinum group metal-copper project in southwestern Yukon.

Since the publication of a resource estimate in 2014, an additional 74 holes have been completed at Wellgreen.

Incorporating the results from this work, Wellgreen now hosts 362 million metric tons of measured and indicated resource averaging 0.26 percent (2.08 billion pounds) nickel; 0.14 percent (1.09 billion lb) copper; 0.015 percent (121 million lb) cobalt; 0.23 grams per metric ton (2.69 million ounces) platinum; 0.24 g/t (2.84 million oz) palladium; and 0.04 g/t (468,000 oz) gold.

Wellgreen said this roughly 10 percent increase over the 2014 resource estimate would have been closer to 25 percent if the same costs, metals prices and recoveries were used.

The inferred class of mineralization declined in tonnage by approximately 86 percent.

Nickel grades, however, increased by 20 percent and copper grades fell by roughly 14 percent.

Near-surface peridotite hosted mineralization remains open to the south in certain areas of the deposit and higher-grade mineralization remains open below and east of the eastern end of the resource pit.

These areas will be the target of future exploration drilling.

In the meantime, the company is looking to produce a higher-grade bulk concentrate from Wellgreen material and will continue its investigation into producing separate concentrates for the copper and nickel.

"Our work thus far indicates separate concentrates could significantly improve the overall potential economics of the project and that work is intended to begin in the fall of 2017 and to be completed prior to the release of a new PEA (preliminary economic assessment) or advancing to a pre-feasibility study, as this information is expected to change the pit shape, mine plan and other factors," said Wellgreen President and CEO Diane Garrett.

The company said the next step is to physically produce separate concentrates, which it plans to complete with a mini-pilot-plant during a second phase later this year.

-SHANE LASLEY