Rockcliff Metals Corporation is 100% owner of Tower and Rail properties.
On September 14, 2023, Hudbay Minerals Inc. acquired all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Rockcliff that it did not already own pursuant to a court-approved plan of arrangement.
As a result of closing the Transaction, Rockcliff is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hudbay.
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Summary:
Deposit Types
At the Project, VMS sulphide mineralization that hosts both the Tower Deposit and the Rail Deposit is consistent with the characteristics of VMS deposits.
The original depositional and stratigraphic relationships are obscured at the Tower Property by the lack of outcrop and the overprinting effects of high metamorphic grade and deformation. The Tower Deposit is interpreted to be a remobilized, high-grade VMS deposit. The Tower Deposit is the only known VMS deposit in the TNB. The Tower mineralization is similar to the VMS Cu-Zn-Ag-Au deposits in the Paleoproterozoic Kisseynew Domain and the Flin Flon-Snow Lake Belt (Bailes and Galley, 1999; Syme and Bailes,1993), to the west, to the Ni sulphide deposits in the TNB. The closest known VMS deposit to the Tower Property is the Talbot Deposit within the Talbot Property, 35 km west of the Tower Property (Simard et al., 2010). The style of VMS mineralization at the Talbot Property appears to be very similar to the style of VMS mineralization at the Tower Property.
The closest known and well-characterized VMS style mineralization to the Rail Deposit is at the Lalor Lake and Chisel Mines located near Snow Lake, 38 km northeast of the Rail Deposit (Galley et al., 2007). The depositional environment for the Rail Deposit is interpreted similarly to that of the VMS deposits in the Flin Flon and Snow Lake mining camps. The Rail Deposit also shows evidence of regional metamorphic and deformation overprints.
Sulphide Mineralization
Tower Property
The Tower deposit mineralisation is associated within a sulphide-rich schist to breccia hosted within biotite-muscovite schist to the north and hornblende gneiss to the south ( Coueslan, 2018). The Tower deposit is approximately 1,000m long, 700m deep, and 1.92m wide. It strikes approximately 13° and dips 75-85°E and cuts the regional foliation. The mineralisation consists of rounded to subangular, mm- to cm-scale fragments of wall rock with a matrix of semi-massive to massive sulphides. The sulphides are mainly chalcopyrite, pyrite, pyrrhotite, and sphalerite. The mineralisation is interpreted to be mobilized from its source and to form the matrix of a fault breccia in a late structure. Although Beaudry (2007) interprets the mineralisation to be post-deformational in origin, recent core from hole TP10-004 is obviously foliated and indicates that at least some of it is pre- or syn-deformational (Generic Geo, 2019). The biotite-muscovite schist is interpreted to represent an intense sericite-altered zone in the footwall to the Tower deposit.
Rail Property
The Rail deposit consists of a single lens of massive and stringer sulphides. The sulphides are mainly pyrite, pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite, and sphalerite. From diamond core drilling, the deposit averages 1.6m in width, approximately 600m in depth, and has a strike length on surface of approximately 650m.
The Rail deposit VMS mineralisation is deformed, as indicated by the presence of Durchbewegung textures with milled sub-angular to rounded quartz and wall rock fragments within the massive sulphide lenses. Chalcopyrite occurs as stringers and fracture fillings and appears to have undergone varying degrees of remobilization. Approximately 140m west of the Rail deposit, an additional pyrrhotite-rich massive sulphide horizon was discovered (Private Report, HBED, 1998).