Liberty opening a new mine

~Ramp construction is expected to start Monday on a brand new underground nickel mining operation for Liberty Mines Inc. which already has the Redstone nickel mining and milling operation in Timmins. The announcement was made on Wednesday.
The new mine, the McWatters Property, is located just nine kilometres east of the Redstone. It is expected to go into production in November.
Liberty Mines has come a long way since March of 2005 when it had $820 in the bank and more than 150 million liters of water at the Redstone Mine south of Timmins.
Company president Gary Nash assured a Timmins Chamber of Commerce lunch crowd recently that things are much improved since then.
Nash was invited by the chamber to outline how Timmins’ newest nickel mine got started and where it’s heading. The message was positive. Nash says not only does Liberty have money in the bank, but he also expects to move forward with more nickel discoveries in the area the company refers to as the Shaw-Dome properties, southwest of Nighthawk Lake.
He said Liberty now has three active properties in Timmins; the Redstone mine, which is in production; the McWatters property, now under construction and the Hart property, which is currently being explored by diamond drills.
Nash told the audience the geology in that area is similar to Australia’s Kambalda region, where 50 new mines have been discovered in the past 50 years.
Talking to reporters after the luncheon, Nash was optimistic.
“I’ll predict we’ll make a grassroots discovery this year,” he said.
He explained that the nickel in that area occurs in “pods” that were formed millions of years ago in volcanic lava channels. Nash said that the area was “under-explored” despite being owned by four different mining companies over the years.
Nash, who has a PhD in physics, said not enough research was done on the properties. He said that historically, the exploration drilling went to less than 200 feet.
“If everybody had looked the way they should have, the way these lava channels are formed and that’s why four previous owners of the Hart project just kinda gave up on it and its proving out for us to be one of the largest tonnage properties that we’ve got.”
Nash admitted things have come a long way since those days in early 2005 when there was $820 in the bank.
“Oh I can tell you that on the balance sheet, there’s 80-million dollars. All the money’s been spent. You can see it in the mill and in the mine’s infrastructure and it will start to show up in our bank account very, very shortly,” he said
“What we’ve done since is show the market that we are maintaining our goals and we’re proving up the resources that we said we would find.”