Nickel North boosts Hawk Ridge inferred resources by 76.6%

Nickel North Exploration (TSXV: NNX) has released an updated mineral resource estimate (MRE) for its 100% owned Hawk Ridge nickel-copper-cobalt-PGM (platinum group metals) project in northern Quebec, showing a significant increase over its initial resource published in 2013. The total inferred mineral resource now totals 34.7 million tonnes with average grades of 0.22% nickel, 0.56% copper, 0.013% cobalt, 0.19  g/t palladium, 0.05 g/t platinum, and 0.025 g/t gold. This represents a 76.6% improvement over the 19.63 million tonnes initially estimated.

A majority of the updated MRE is pit-constrained, totalling 29.4 million tonnes at 0.20% nickel, 0.52% copper, 0.012% cobalt, 0.19 g/t palladium, 0.04 g/t platinum, and 0.021 g/t gold, for a 50% increase. The total underground resource, which is absent in the previous estimate, comes to 5.2 million tonnes at average grades of 0.35% nickel, 0.79% copper, 0.014% cobalt, 0.23 g/t palladium, 0.06 g/t platinum and 0.04 g/t gold.

"This mineral resource update delivers on both of its key objectives – better definition and increased the pit-constrained mineral resource and establishing an initial mineral resource for potential underground mining," Tony Guo, president and CEO of Nickel North, said.

He added that this update puts the company in an "excellent position" for the planning the next large drilling program to further define both high-grade out-of-pit targets and expanding the pit-constrained resources in the late 2022 to summer 2023 working seasons.

He also noted that the MRE is only based on drilling up to 2014, and there has been no drilling since then, with over 50 km of north-south strike length. The entire Hawk Ridge land package, which covers an area of 173 km², is open for exploration and only a fraction of it included in the resource update.

The new MRE encompasses resource updates on the previously reported Hope Advance Main (HAM) zone and Hope Advance North (HAN), Gamma and Falco 7 deposits. According to Nickel North, higher-grade "Raglan Type" sulphide mineralization exists in all four sulphide deposits, and all of them remain open along strike and down-dip.

Located near tidewater, the Hawk Ridge project consists of a 50-km belt of strong magmatic copper-nickel-cobalt-PGM occurrences, about half of which are still undrilled or untested.

More details about this project can be found at www.nickelnorthexploration.com.