Wallbridge Mining Company Limited - Lonmin Plc JV

Projects Overview Sudbury Properties Xstrata Nickel JV Lonmin Plc JV North Range Project Rogers Creek Property Duluth Metals Project Photos

Lonmin plc Joint Venture
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The Company entered into the Sudbury Camp Joint Venture ("SCJV") agreement with Lonmin Plc ("Lonmin") on January 14, 2002. Under terms of the Joint Venture, Lonmin earns a 50% interest in any property at the point at which an Indicated Resource is established on that property. Lonmin then has the option to earn an additional 15% interest by funding work through completion of a feasibility study and securing the Wallbridge portion of financing through to commercial production.

The SCJV was restructured in 2006 to create a more focused expenditure effort on seven projects.

The restructuring of the SCJV, which formerly covered 18 of Wallbridge's properties in Sudbury reduced the number of properties in the Joint Venture to seven, and committed the partners to a US$1.050 million summer exploration program for the period from April 1, 2006 to September 30, 2006.

Under the terms of the amendment, Lonmin will be required to commit to expenditures of at least US$1.0 million per year in order to earn its right to a 50% interest in any joint venture property at such time an Indicated Resource is declared.

The amendment also provides Wallbridge with the opportunity to fund expenditures in excess of Lonmin's minimum commitment up to Indicated Resource stage. Lonmin's interest at the Indicated Resource stage will be reduced pro-rata to the extent that Wallbridge has contributed to the exploration program on a particular property. Lonmin can buy back the Wallbridge interest when an Indicated Resource has been declared.

Project funding for the SCJV in 2007 will total C$2.1 million with Lonmin contributing C$1.22 million and Wallbridge contributing C$0.88 million. Exploration in 2007 will be focused on the Skynner Lake,Trill, Foy, and Windy Lake properties.

Trill Figure
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The Trill property covers a 9.5 kilometre strikelength of footwall on the western margin of the SIC. Exploration in 2006 was focused on locating extensions to the mineralized Trill Offset Dyke discovered in 2005. Offset dykes are highly prospective geological targets as demonstrated by Copper Cliff Offset Dyke, which is mineralized along a 14 km strike-length. During the course of detailed and regional mapping and prospecting programs, spectacular outcrops of Sudbury Breccia were found south of the Trill Offset Dyke in the area of a single point gravity anomaly.

A program of detailed gravity surveying defined a gravity "high" anomaly covering an area of at least 6 square kilometres and suggested that a new belt of Sudbury Breccia had been discovered. Modelling of gravity and audio-magneto-telluric ("AMT") data provided strong evidence that the gravity anomaly was associated with a belt of Sudbury Breccia having a gentle east-dip toward the SIC contact.This exciting new discovery will be explored by a large array of Titan 24 IP and MT survey lines in 2007, which also is ideally located to cover ground that is regarded as highly prospective for extensions to the Trill Offset Dyke toward the SIC contact.

Also in 2007, the belt of Sudbury Breccia found to underlay West Cameron Lake and East Totten Lake will be explored using conventional IP to discover conductive zones associated with disseminated to massive sulphide with drilling to follow on prospective targets.

Skynner Cross Section
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The Skynner Lake property covers 762 hectares in the East Range footwall of the Sudbury Basin between FNX's Podolsky Project and Wallbridge's Frost Lake property. Numerous discoveries have been made on the East Range including CVRD Inco's mined out Whistle deposit, the Victor,Victor Deep and Capre Lake sulphide deposits, and FNX's Podolsky and Xstrata Nickel's Nickel Rim South projects, both of which are under development and will be in production by 2009.The extension of the Skynner Lake breccia belt hosts the new high grade Cu-PGE zone as recently announced on the CVRD Inco-Lonmin joint venture property to the south-east.

Work to date on the Skynner Lake property has identified a large belt of favourable Sudbury Breccia within 500-1,000 metres of the SIC contact that is prospective for footwall-style Cu-PGE mineralization. The belt shows extensive alteration including partial melting and recrystallization of Sudbury Breccia along with pathfinder element enrichments. On the Skynner Lake property, the belt has been mapped at surface over a width of 50-200 meters and over a north-south strike-length of roughly 4 kilometres. Outcrop mapping shows that the breccia belt continues southward onto Wallbridge's Frost Lake property, which hosts the Amy Lake Cu-PGE zone in the Capre/ Amy Lake area. Drilling to date on the breccia belt has been limited largely to within several hundred metres of the surface and the zone is, for the most part, untested below 250 metres depth.This breccia belt appears to extend onto the CVRD Inco-Lonmin Capre Lake joint venture property where the joint venture partners recently announced the discovery of high grade Cu-PGE mineralization in massive chalcopyrite veins and vein stockworks surrounded by a zone of disseminated, low-sulphide mineralization with moderate to high PGE grades.

The similarities between belts of Sudbury Breccia on the Skynner Lake property and those hosting mineralization elsewhere in the Sudbury Mining Camp (McCreedy East 153, Strathcona Deep Cu, Levack Footwall) are striking and include a similar scale, distance and orientation relative to the SIC contact and pathfinder element enrichments.Although the northern Skynner Lake block has only been explored by drilling within the top several hundred metres, the breccia belt in the southern block has only recently been identified by surface mapping and no drilling has been completed to date.

The exploration focus in 2007 will be a winter program of Titan 24 IP and MT surveying followed by up to 1,250 metres of diamond drilling on priority geophysical anomalies.

The Foy property is located in the North Range Footwall to the SIC approximately one km northwest of First Nickel's Premiere Ridge deposit, which hosts 43-101 compliant resources of 559,000 t grading 1.23% Ni, 0.73% Cu, 0.16 g/t Pt, 0.21 g/t Pd.

The property covers a ten kilometre strike-length of footwall rocks in the North Range of the SIC and is underlain predominantly by mafic and felsic gneisses cross-cut by several generations of diabase dykes.A major structure trends north-westward across the Foy property and is rooted in the SIC contact where it cuts the Premier Ridge deposit. Detailed mapping and prospecting discovered numerous outcrops of Sudbury Breccia along this structure some of which were weakly enriched in PGE and pathfinder elements typical of structures, which host footwall Cu-PGE deposits elsewhere in the Sudbury Basin.

The property has seen only a preliminary stage of mapping and prospecting and has been covered by ground and airborne geophysical surveys, which defined a number of geophysical anomalies. Drilling of Geotem and VTEM airborne anomalies in the winter of 2006 intersected stringers of barren pyrrhotite that explained the anomalies, but a number of IP anomalies remain untested some of which are spatially associated with Sudbury Breccia occurrences containing anomalous pathfinder element concentrations.These anomalies will be tested in 2007 together with the completion of mapping and prospecting along the northwesttrending structure, which appears to be a focus of Sudbury Breccia formation and hydrothermal activity.

The Creighton South property is strategically located southwest of the embayment that hosts CVRD Inco's giant Creighton Mine. It covers a large section of South Range footwall rocks adjacent to Wallbridge's Graham property, which is a joint venture with Xstrata Nickel.The property straddles the South Range Breccia Belt ("SRBB"), a belt of Sudbury Breccia inferred to be continuous for 45 kilometres from Frood-Stobie Mine in the east to the mined out Vermillion deposit in the west. Both these deposits had significant PGE contents.A second belt of intense brecciation was discovered in 2003, which trends directly back towards the highly mineralized Creighton Embayment and was named the Creighton South Breccia Belt.

Mapping and prospecting by Wallbridge in 2006 added to the numerous occurrences of chalcopyrite veinlets that had been discovered previously in metamorphosed Huronian volcanic and sedimentary rocks some of which are spatially related to zones of Sudbury Breccia. A large portion of these veinlets have anomalous PGE and pathfinder element enrichments. Analysis of the pathfinder element contents of these veins strongly indicates that at least some are related to hydrothermal fluid circulation during cooling of the 1 SIC.This is supported by the discovery of high temperature, highly saline brines in fluid inclusions from one of the veinlets with enriched PGEs. Potential for significant mineralization in these rocks is also supported by the CVRD Inco-Lonmin Denison discovery located in these rocks adjacent to the Crean Hill mine about seven kilometres to the west.

Additional mapping and sampling is planned for 2007 to define structural trends, which can be used as a vector toward larger mineralized bodies.

The Windy Lake property was acquired in 1999 to cover a five kilometre segment of the SIC contact that lay beneath Windy Lake.The property was explored between 1999 and 2003 with major geophysical (UTEM,AMT) and drill programs (~28,500 m) that defined a new embayment structure in the SIC contact. Deep drilling from ice on Windy Lake, Sugar Loaf Island and the peninsula that projects into the lake from the south-western shore discovered minor amounts of nickel sulphide mineralization in rocks typical of mineralized embayments elsewhere in the Sudbury Basin.

Additional exploration is planned for the Windy Lake property in 2007 on the basis of the new structural model that was developed for the Sudbury Basin and a reinterpretation of deep penetrating geophysical surveys and drill core logs from drilling on the peninsula. The new work will consist of deepening one of the holes on the peninsula in order to determine whether prospective and mineralized rocks intersected by previous drilling may project closer to surface in other parts of the embayment and to provide platforms for additional geophysical surveys.