MCFAULDS LAKE


On February 28th, 2001, joint venture partners KWG Resources Inc and Spider Resources Inc (“Spider”) entered into a joint venture with De Beers Canada Exploration Inc (“DeBeers”) whereby De Beers would earn a 50% interest in the claims staked as a result of any discovery made based on targets generated by a KWG-Spider fixed wing magnetic survey that covered a large portion of the James Bay Lowlands. On March 9th, 2001, De Beers staked claims 1242319 and 1242329 to cover a magnetic anomaly at the north end of McFaulds Lake with the intention of testing the anomaly with  core drilling. Drilling discovered copper and zinc bearing massive sulphides, the first discovery in what is now known as the Ring of Fire. The discovery was followed by staking of claims over a large area. De Beers was not interested in participating in base metal exploration under the joint venture and ceased to be a joint venture partner. In a subsequent agreement dated May 2nd, 2003, De Beers ceded to each of Spider and KWG a 50% interest in the claims staked and retained  a 1.5% Net Smelter Royalty, and 0% interest in the claims. From 2003 to 2006, the Spider-KWG joint venture discovered 10 occurrences of copper and/or zinc. In 2007 this property, along with other properties in the area, were optioned to UC Resources Ltd. (“UC”) who had a right to earn a 55% interest in the properties, thereby reducing Spiders interest to 30% and KWG’s interest to 15%. UC conducted work on the property until 2011 when they sold their right to earn an interest in the property to Cliffs Chromite Far North Inc., who  conducted further work on the property and have earned UC’s 55% interest, in addition to the 30% interest belonging to Spider which was purchased by Cliffs Natural Resources (“Cliffs”) and renamed Cliffs Chromite Far North Inc, which Noront Resources Ltd. (“Noront”) purchased in 2015 (Figure 6).

Figure 6

Figure 6