The KE Report Magna Mining – H2 2025 Guidance At Producing McCreedy West Mine, Exploration and Development At The Levack Mine, Acquisition Closed Of Portfolio Of Projects From NorthX Nickel
Jason Jessup, CEO and Director of Magna Mining (TSX.V: NICU) (OTCQX: MGMNF), joins me for a review of H2 2025 guidance and an operations update at their producing McCreedy West copper mine in Sudbury, Canada. We also review the ongoing exploration and development work at the Levack Mine, working towards and updated resource estimate in Q3 and mine restart plan by year-end for potential production in 2026. We also review the news out today about the closing of the acquisition of a package of development and exploration projects from NorthX Nickel Corp.
We kick off the conversation with a review of production and cost guidance for the second half of 2025 a their McCreedy West Mine.
Highlights (in USD unless otherwise stated):
- Quarterly ore sales from the 700 Copper Zone are expected to be between 80,000 and 92,000 tons in the second half of 2025.
- Contained copper equivalent grade expected to be between 2.9% to 3.4% in Q3 2025, and 3.8% to 4.4% in Q4 2025.
- Cash costs (per copper equivalent pound) expected to be $3.85 to $4.40 in Q3 2025, reducing to $3.11 to $3.66 in Q4 2025.
- AISC (per copper equivalent pound) expected to be $4.95 to $5.49 in Q3 2025 and $3.85 to $4.47 in Q4 2025.
Jason discusses the primary focus at McCreedy West for this year is really getting all the development work completed to be able to really ramp up production in a big way in 2026. The company has invested capital into underground equipment and additional development, hired additional people to support a 24-7 operation at the mine, and they are seeing the benefits of this plan materialize. The mine plan for this year is evolving, where a 3rd party contractor has been brought in to get in front of 6+ months of extra underground development, with the plan to get access to mining areas that have better grades like the area to the west of the 700 Copper Zone. Jason explains that they expect all-in sustaining costs to decrease in 2026 after concluding their accelerated capital development program and achieve our optimization goals.
There will still be ore processed each quarter, but the operations teams wants to get enough stopes opened up through development for the balance of this year to have options in accessing mineralization from different parts of the mine. We also reviewed how in addition to the high-grade copper area of the mine in the 700 Copper Zone, that there is the Intermain Nickel Zone and a Precious Metals Zone, with platinum, palladium, and gold that can be accessed down the road at the right metals prices and margins.
Next we transitioned over to all the exploration focus at the past-producing Levack mine and Jason outlines the Company strategy to keep aggressively drilling and delineating mineralization with a targeted Resource Estimate for Q3, while also continuing with engineering work to then put out a Mine Restart Plan by year end or the beginning of next year. This is all leading towards the pathway for bringing the Levack Mine back into production in 2026. Additionally, the team is still advancing similar derisking and development work at their Crean Hill Project where, depending on financial market conditions, it could be on a dual track for production in late 2026 or early 2027.
Wrapping up we reviewed a few of the exploration and development properties included in their acquisition which closed today with portfolio of properties located in the Sudbury Basin from NorthX Nickel Corp. (CSE: NIX). The NorthX properties being acquired represent 304 km2 of mineral claims, leases and patents in the Sudbury area. The acquisition of the NorthX property portfolio brings Magna's aggregate holdings in the Sudbury area to 584 km2. Several properties host known exploration targets within Sudbury Breccia units in the footwall of the Sudbury Igneous Complex (SIC), including the Wisner, Blezard, Frost Lake and Creighton South properties. The Wisner property historically produced 295,000 tonnes grading 0.9% Cu and 4.1 g/t Pt + Pd + Au from the surface Broken Hammer Zone (Technical Report on Wallbridge's Sudbury Area Properties, Ontario (Canada), 2017). The Blezard and Creighton South properties cover portions of the footwall environment near the known Blezard and Creighton contact deposits, which have measured and indicated resources of 7.9 million tonnes grading 1.0% Ni, 0.7% Cu and 6.2 million tonnes grading 4.5% Ni, 3.3% Cu, respectively.
If you have questions for Jason regarding Magna Mining, then please email me at Shad@kereport.com.
- In full disclosure, Shad is a shareholder of Magna Mining at the time of this recording.