Norra Metals’ High-Grade Massive Sulphide Bleikvassli Project Is Soon To Bring Norway’s Mining Regime Back To The Future
Norra Metals’ High-Grade Massive Sulphide Bleikvassli Project Is Soon To Bring Norway’s Mining Regime Back To The Future
History often repeats itself and for Norra Metals that’s a goodthing. That’s because Norra (TSX.V:NORA) is the ‘first to hold the last’ producing sulphide metal mine in Norway, a Scandinavian country with plenty of untapped natural resources. More recently, however, new mining laws have been enacted and there was a bit of a fire sale in 2017-2018 when a series of 7-year terms ended. Norra and its partner, EMX Royalty Corpwas the first to jump on dozens of mining claims that suddenly came available throughout the land. This set in motion an opportunity for Norra to acquire the 6000-hectare Bleikvassliproject, a massive sulphide deposit and past-producing mine that produced five million tonnes of ore at high grade levels of zinc-lead-copper-silver/gold. Norra now has an opportunity to take advantage of data from over 50 years of mining, drilling, trenching, geophysics, underground development and sampling and very, very inexpensively repeat that history at today’s commodity prices. That’s the ‘steak’ and here’s the ‘sizzle’: initial review of the historic data and geologic modelling suggest an expansion potential to further expand the resource. This in a company that recently completed a $1.37 million financing to fund exploration, bringing it to a market cap of $14 M.
BREAKING NEWS: As I’m about to file this story, Norra has announced the appointment of Mr. Jeet Basi to its board of directors. Basi is an established mining industry professional with over 15 years of technical leadership experience in global public mining companies including Newmont, Goldcorp, and Teck Resources. He brings deep-level mining experience as asenior advisor in the areas of technical services, project development, and strategic planning across all of Newmont’s Canadian, U.S., and Mexican assets. Prior to Newmont, Basiheld an 8-year position as corporate manager of processing & metallurgy for Goldcorp.
Bleikvassli Project, Norway
“Norway has a long history of mining, but in recent history an alarmingly low amount of exploration has meant the mineral potential of this country has been completely overlooked” says CEO, Mike Devji. Mining has occurred since the Viking days(mid 1600’s), according to Devji, up until WWI and WWII when there was war and too much political uncertainty to undertake exploration and extraction. Post ‘ancient history’ and two world wars, Norway’s priority was its vast North Sea oil endowment with the first major discoveries being made in the late 1960’s. As mineral-rich as the country is, its mining laws were also antiquated. “Up until 2010 Norway had in place a system where you could effectively hold an asset in perpetuity with very little capital expenditure.” That all changed in 2010 when the government of Norway put in place a system whereby permits were granted for a 7-year period and minimum work was required. So, when the first 7-year term was up, those sleepers came available under a new regime that also permitted foreign investment. “By early 2017, a surge of properties opened up for acquisition and we jumped on that incredible opportunity” says Devji. From summer 2018 to late November2019, Norra performed its due-diligence process and settled on two projects.
What Norra retained, at a minimal cost of $500,000, was the last past-producing sulphide metal mine in Norway and the vast amount of the exploration ground around it. Bleikvassli is aformer massive sulphide Zn-Cu–Pb-Ag-(Au) producer. Themine produced more than five million tonnes of ore in a 40 year period ending in 1997.
The other property, Meråker, hosts an extensive area of Au enriched volcanic massive sulphide (VMS) style with numerous copper-zinc-gold mineralized occurrences. It also had some past small-scale mining operations.
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