The Creighton Mine, part of Sudbury Operations, is owned and operated by Vale Canada Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vale Base Metals Ltd., the holding entity of Vale’s Energy Transition Metals business.
On April 30, 2024, Vale S.A. announced the completion of the sale of Vale Base Metals Ltd. (“VBM”) to Manara Minerals, under which Manara Minerals acquired a 10% interest in VBM.
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Summary:
The Creighton deposit consists of the actively mined 310, 400, 461 orebodies and the inactive Creighton Deep 320, 330 and 6100 zones.
The Creighton deposit hosts Contact- and Footwall-style mineralization. Mineralization is hosted within the Creighton Embayment and is controlled by two troughs or indentations into the footwall region. Quartz diorite, quartz diabase and olivine diabase dykes occur. Footwall rocks consist of the Paleoproterozoic Creighton Granite/Gabbro that intrudes lower Huronian Metavolcanic rocks and metasediments. Sudbury Breccia occurs within the footwall rocks.
The Creighton Fault cuts the Creighton embayment just south of the Creighton deposit. It is a steeply-dipping, east–west-trending fault system and has been interpreted as primarily dextral strike slip with a lesser normal component of displacement.
The Cliff Lake Fault is a major, shallow south–southeast dipping thrust structure related to the South Range Shear Zone. Drilling at Creighton Mine has intersected the Cliff Lake Fault at a depth of approximately 10,000 ft (approximately 3.1 km). Displacement has been interpreted up to 4 km.
Throughout the Creighton deposit, evidence of significant structural influence on footwall ore emplacement, geometry and sulphide fractionation is evident. Major shears include the 6 Shaft, 117, 118, 400 East, 1290 and 2000N shears. There are several other minor shears within the mine area.
Mineralization
Contact-style mineralization has a generalized sequence of sulphide styles from hanging wall to footwall of disseminated sulphide, interstitial sulphide, ragged disseminated sulphide, gabbro peridotite inclusion sulphide, contorted schist inclusion sulphide, inclusion-bearing massive sulphide and massive sulphide.
The major sulphides are pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite and pentlandite. Minor sulphides include pyrite, cubanite (CuFe2S3), cobaltite, sphalerite, galena, and gersdorffite. The precious metal mineral assemblage includes michenerite, hollingworthite, irarsite ((Ir, Ru, Rh, Pt) AsS), froodite, Pd-melonite (PdNiTe2), sperrylite and native gold. All of the zones contain low levels of arsenic, lead, and zinc. The Creighton zones have variable copper to nickel and pyrrhotite to nickel ratios.