en.Wedoany.com Reported - Canada Nickel Company has disclosed that the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada has submitted the final impact assessment report for the Crawford Nickel Project to the Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Natural Resources, moving the project into the final decision-making stage of the federal impact assessment process. The Minister's decision statement is expected to be issued within 30 days of the report's submission, and final project approval remains subject to that statement.

The Crawford Project includes an open-pit nickel-cobalt mine and a supporting concentrator, with a maximum ore mining capacity of 240,000 tonnes per day and a maximum concentrator processing capacity of 120,000 tonnes per day, over a planned operating life of approximately 41 years. After completing front-end engineering design, Canada Nickel Company updated the project's initial capital expenditure to approximately $2 billion, an increase of about 5% compared to the 2023 feasibility study estimate.

Under the current design, the project is planned to produce approximately 48,000 tonnes of nickel, 800 tonnes of cobalt, 13,000 ounces of platinum group metals, and 1.6 million tonnes of iron concentrate annually at peak production; over the full life cycle, it is expected to produce approximately 1.6 million tonnes of nickel, 58 million tonnes of iron, and 2.8 million tonnes of chromium. The project has been included in the review scope of the federal Major Projects Management Office and listed under Ontario's "One Project, One Process" approval framework.

The project also plans to adopt in-situ process tailings carbonation technology, injecting concentrated carbon dioxide into tailings during the concentration process to react with ultramafic minerals and achieve permanent sequestration. Pilot test results indicate that this process has the potential to sequester approximately 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually during the peak production phase, and it remains part of the project's design and engineering validation scope. Canada Nickel Company plans to continue completing financing and engineering preparations, targeting a construction decision by 2027.