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Projects Overview
Sudbury Properties
Xstrata Nickel JV
Lonmin Plc JV
North Range Project
Rogers Creek Property
Duluth Metals
Project Photos |
Investment in Duluth Metals Limited![]() In October 2006, our strategy to deliver the value inherent in our Minnesota property to both Wallbridge and individual Wallbridge shareholders reached an important milestone when Duluth Metals Limited ("DML") began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange (Trading Symbol "DM").The spin-out of Duluth Metals has turned our Maturi Extension Property from a nonperforming asset into the core asset of a well financed, fully functional company with a current market capitalization of about $50 million, of which Wallbridge owns 22%.At the time of the spin-out Wallbridge shareholders owned an additional 26% of DML through conversion of their Special Warrants they had received as a dividend. Late in 2005, management decided to spin-out the Company's Minnesota Property into a new company, called Duluth Metals Limited (Duluth Metals or DML), whose focus would be exploration and development of the property. As part of the spin-out transaction Wallbridge shareholders of record as at November 15, 2005 received a Special Warrant dividend of 1 Special Warrant for every four shares of Wallbridge held.These Special Warrants converted to free trading shares of DML upon completion of its IPO in October 2006.In addition, for its part in the transaction Wallbridge received 10 million shares of Duluth. As a result, upon completion of the DML's IPO in October 2006,Wallbridge owned about 22% of the then issued stock in DML with Wallbridge shareholders owning a further 11,848,466 shares representing another 26% of DML. DML is now a well financed, fully functional public company managed by a select group of dedicated professionals with extensive combined experience in copper and nickel exploration, development and mining, and business management and finance. Duluth Metals principal asset is the Nokomis Deposit situated within approximately 3,000 acres of the Maturi Extension Properties. Duluth Metals has received an updated interim NI 43-101 compliant Resource Estimate for the Nokomis Deposit which contains 449 million tonnes of the higher classification resource category of Indicated Resources grading 0.624% copper, 0.199% nickel, 0.600 grams per tonne of total precious metals (TPM = Platinum+Palladium+Gold), and an additional 284 million tonnes of Inferred Resources grading 0.627% copper, 0.194% nickel, 0.718 grams per tonne of TPM. On January 22, 2008, DML announced the receipt of its Scoping Study ("the Study") on the Nokomis Deposit entitled "Technical Report on the Preliminary Assessment on the Nokomis Project, Minnesota, U.S.A.", completed by Scott Wilson RPA. Graham G. Clow, P.Eng. of Scott Wilson RPA is the Independent Qualified Person who is responsible for the report. The engineering parameters of the Study included 20,000 tonnes of ore per day being mined from underground operations, which would be crushed and ground, concentrated, hydrometallurgically extracted, and the copper and nickel would be recovered by electro-winning, and the PGMs, gold and silver would be shipped to a third party precious metals refinery. The Study also included costs associated with production royalties, site infrastructure, utilities, material handling, tailings, and final project reclamation. The Study's economic parameters indicate the potential for the Nokomis Project to be one of the world's low cost copper, nickel, PGM operations. Annual production for the 25 year project was calculated at 100.2 million lbs of copper, 23.8 million lbs of nickel, 430,000 lbs of cobalt, 33,000 oz of platinum, 75,000 oz of palladium, and 13,000 oz of gold. Using base case prices (US dollars) of $1.75/lb Cu; $7.00/lb Ni; $10.00/lb Co; $1,100/oz Pt; $350/oz Pd; $600/oz Au; and market prices of $3.31/lb Cu; $12.70/lb Ni; $47.00/lb Co; $1,559 per oz Pt; $376 per oz Pd; $895 per oz Au as of January 13, 2008 (the "market case"), the project economics generate the following (in US dollars): • Base case pre-tax Net Present Value of $792 million at a 10% discount rate and $4.3 billion undiscounted, generating a pre-tax IRR of 21%, and market case pre-tax Net Present Value of $3.2 billion at a 10% discount rate and $12.3 billion undiscounted, generating a pre-tax IRR of 47%. • Average annual pre-tax operating cash flow over a 25 year mine life for the base case of $219 million per year and $540 million per year for market case. • Payback on a pre-production capital expenditure of $915.7 million, including contingency of $116.2 million, in 4 years for the base case and 2 years for the market case. • Base case revenue is derived 42% from copper, 40% from nickel, 1% from cobalt, and 17% from platinum, palladium, and gold. The Nokomis Deposit is located about 19 km (12 miles) southeast of the town of Ely, in an area which has excellent infrastructure, including power, well-developed roads, railway networks, supplyequipment centers that support local operating iron ore mines, and a skilled mine and mining-related labour force located in the region. |