Australian-based mining company Wyloo Metals, which completed its acquisition of Noront Resources in April, has restarted exploration in Canada’s Ring of Fire with a drilling program at Blue Jay.

Wyloo’s acquisition of Noront included five resource-defined orebodies: Eagles Nest (nickel-copper-PGMs), McFaulds (copper-zinc) and the Blackbird, Big Daddy and Black Thor chromite deposits. For now, only the Eagle’s Nest project is listed on the company’s projects webpage, and the company stated that while the deposits have the potential to be mined, the main attraction of Noront’s Ring of Fire claims was the exploration potential. Geophysical results from one of the exploration targets, Blue Jay, suggest a close geological association with Eagles Nest, and Wyloo's announcement to kick off exploration here supports the company’s interest to start with a focus on nickel.

Wyloo plans to build a net-zero emissions mine and join Canada's strategy of sustainable supply sources for critical materials, but the company acknowledges that to do so in the remote and pristine Ring of Fire will be challenging. Environmental assessment processes are currently underway for three sections of a north-south all-weather road into the Ring of Fire, a process that has already had several delays along the way for Noront. The access road is critical to open up the mining potential of the Ring of Fire, especially to bring to market the bulk volume chromium ores. While the chromium mines play second fiddle to the primary targets of Wyloo, the company notes chromium’s criticality position in the North American market. While chromium is not in the limelight of battery and new-energy technology materials, Project Blue’s Critical Raw Materials Risk index places chromium as the energy transition material with the highest risk association of Wyloo’s Ring of Fire portfolio metals.