Page 48 One of Ontario s fagship mining camps still has plenty of life The Sud bury mining basin and the region s extraordinary supply and services sec tor continues to grow innovate and provide stabilit y for tens of thousands of employees W ith more than a dozen mines in the region and plenty of ex ploration projects Sudbury remains one of Ontario s economic engines Companies like T orontobased Inven tus Mining Corporation are relatively new players to the region In late No vember Inventus released an enthu siastic report to investors suggesting they were confdent theyve stumbled on to a promising gold property north east of Sudbury A number of Sudbury s less proftable mines are in care and maintenance mode as operators wait for a dramatic bump in the price of nickel The stalwarts of the basin the historic properties that have sustained the re gion for more than a century continue to produce while industry innovators collaborate with tech companies in search of solutions to things like deep mining It s the smaller companies like W all bridge Mining that are making the most noise In an interview with Min ing Life W allbridge President and CEO Marz Kord spoke about the company s extraordinary results in Quebec that have impacted the direc tion they want to go with their Sud bury assets W e still have a very valuab le set of properties in Sudbury and we need to unlock that value said Kord W e want to spin it Sudbury land pack age out because we understand that PGM is a diferent kind of investing group but Im a big believ er that it is kind of like sending your kids away you don t want them to come back for rent money so we needed to have another near term to production as set Kord says W allbridge hopes to spin out the Sudbury assets by the end of the year while maintaining an inter est in some of the properties giving shareholders value in the PGM sector as well as gold The Broken Hammer project was dis covered by W allbridge s exploration team with the frst identifcation of mineralization in 2003 Based on the positive results of a 30000 tonne bulk sample in 201 1 W allbridge initiated a prefeasibility study and permitting process in preparation for the opera tion of Broken Hammer deposit as a small open pit operation W allbridge received all required permits for the operation of its Broken Hammer open pit project in 2014 and used the pro ceeds from that project to fnance the Fenelon play Overall 2020 and beyond for Ontar io s premiere mining camps including Sudbury Kirkland Lake T immins and northwestern Ontario is predict ably upbeat Each region is enjoying the benefts of a spike in precious metals prices and the added beneft of rising global demand for rare earth el ements REE and battery metals for electric vehicles Sudbury active heading into new decade By Kevin V incent