Vancouver, June 21, 2021 – FPX Nickel Corp. (FPX-TSX.V) (“FPX” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce the appointment of Andrew Osterloh, P. Eng., as Vice-President, Projects. Mr. Osterloh, formerly Project Director and Manager of Studies for Fluor Canada, will assume technical leadership for the continued exploration and development of FPX’s Baptiste Nickel Project at its Decar Nickel District in central British Columbia, Canada.
“We are very fortunate to have added an experienced mining professional of Andrew’s calibre to our team,” commented Martin Turenne, FPX Nickel’s President and CEO. “Andrew has a wide-ranging background in managing technical and economic studies for a number of high-profile, high-throughput projects for major mining companies including Glencore, Teck, Barrick and Freeport-McMoRan. He also has deep experience in both operating and study-oriented roles on mines in British Columbia, including Teck’s Highland Valley Copper Mine and Imperial Metals’ Huckleberry Mine. As we move our flagship Baptiste Nickel Project toward a preliminary feasibility study, Andrew will play a critical role in guiding all project activities to a high technical standard.”
Mr. Osterloh has over 20 years’ mining industry experience in process engineering, plant metallurgy and project management. In his project management roles for Fluor Canada, he led feasibility study work for several large base metal assets in the Americas, including Glencore’s NorthMet copper-nickel project in Minnesota, Freeport-McMoRan’s Lone Star copper project in Arizona, and the NuevaUnión copper-gold joint venture in Chile by Teck and Newmont. Mr. Osterloh’s project development successes are founded on rigorous capital efficiency, risk mitigation, and execution certainty. Prior to joining Fluor, Mr. Osterloh acted as Plant Metallurgist and Mill General Foreman at Barrick Gold’s Eskay Creek Mine in northwest British Columbia, and as Plant Metallurgist for Imperial Metals’ Huckleberry Mine in central B.C. Mr. Osterloh is a Member of the Association of Professional Engineers of British Columbia and holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Mineral Process Engineering from the University of British Columbia.
FPX has granted 600,000 stock options to Mr. Osterloh. The stock options have an exercise price of $0.60 per share and will expire on June 21, 2026.
About the Decar Nickel District
The Company’s Decar Nickel District claims cover 245 km2 of the Mount Sidney Williams ultramafic/ophiolite complex, 90 km northwest of Fort St. James in central British Columbia. The District is a two-hour drive from Fort St. James on a high-speed logging road.
Decar hosts a greenfield discovery of nickel mineralization in the form of a naturally occurring nickel-iron alloy called awaruite (Ni3Fe), which is amenable to bulk-tonnage, open-pit mining. Awaruite mineralization has been identified in four target areas within this ophiolite complex, being the Baptiste Deposit, and the B, Sid and Van targets, as confirmed by drilling in the first three plus petrographic examination, electron probe analyses and outcrop sampling on all four. Since 2010, approximately US $24 million has been spent on the exploration and development of Decar.
Of the four targets in the Decar Nickel District, the Baptiste Deposit, which was initially the most accessible and had the biggest known surface footprint, has been the focus of diamond drilling since 2010, with a total of 82 holes and over 31,000 metres of drilling completed. The Sid target was tested with two holes in 2010 and the B target had a single hole drilled in 2011; all three holes intersected nickel-iron alloy mineralization over wide intervals with DTR nickel grades comparable to the Baptiste Deposit. The Van target was not drill-tested at that time as rock exposure was very poor prior to more recent logging activity.
As reported in the current NI 43-101 resource estimate, having an effective date of September 9, 2020, the Baptiste Deposit contains 1.996 billion tonnes of indicated resources at an average grade of 0.122% DTR nickel, containing 2.4 million tonnes of nickel, plus 593 million tonnes of inferred resources with an average grade of 0.114% DTR nickel, containing 0.7 million tonnes of nickel, both reported at a cut-off grade of 0.06% DTR nickel. Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.
About FPX Nickel Corp.
FPX Nickel Corp. is focused on the exploration and development of the Decar Nickel District, located in central British Columbia, and other occurrences of the same unique style of naturally occurring nickel-iron alloy mineralization known as awaruite. For more information, please view the Company’s website at www.fpxnickel.com or contact Martin Turenne, President and CEO, at (604) 681-8600 or ceo@fpxnickel.com.
On behalf of FPX Nickel Corp.
“Martin Turenne”
Martin Turenne, President, CEO and Director
