First Nickel Inc. - Home Page

First Nickel is one of Canada's premier nickel / copper explorers, with resources identified exceeding 170 million pounds of nickel.

The Company has five high quality exploration projects including the Lockerby Mine which was acquired from Falconbridge in 2005.

First Nickel has successfully increased the Probable Reserves at its Lockerby Mine five-fold since it was acquired in 2005. As a result of persisting low metal prices, production at the mine was suspended and the facility placed on care and maintenance status in October 2008.

A February 2009 Feasibility Study on the development and mining of the Lockerby Depth, prepared by GENIVAR Limited Partnership, estimates:

an IRR of 40.5%
undiscounted pre-tax, pre-finance cumulative cash flow of $65.4 million after capital recovery*
metal production totaling 51.7 million pounds payable nickel, 34.4 million pounds payable copper, and 1.0 million pounds payable cobalt.
unit cash operating costs net of by-product credits are estimated at US$4.50 per pound of nickel over the 6.5 year mine plan at a production rate of 280,000 tpy.

* assuming average metal prices of US$7.00/lb Ni, US$ 2.00/lb Cu, and US$ 17.00/lb Co. An exchange rate of $US0.82/$CDN was used for this study