President’s letter to the shareholders of Giga Metals
President’s letter to the shareholders of Giga Metals
(Vancouver, B.C.) The year 2018 will be transformative for Giga Metals (TSX.V – GIGA). We
are well funded, having raised more than $5 million in the last several months. We are planning a
major drill campaign for the summer, and our technical team has begun internal engineering
studies with the goal of making our project shovel ready by 2021.
Our Turnagain nickel/cobalt project hosts a NI 43-101 resource containing 4.1 billion pounds of
nickel and 252 million pounds of cobalt in the measured and indicated categories, plus a further
4.3 billion pounds of nickel and 279 million pounds of cobalt in the inferred resource category ,
with less than 25% of the prospective nickel geology drilled.
Extensive metallurgical work on our project , reported in our 2011 PEA , has shown that we can
reliably create a clean concentrate grading 18% nickel and 1% cobalt, and that we can create this
concentrate with a simple processing circuit using off -the-shelf, tried and true technology. The
concentrate would be sold to smelters to be refined to class one nickel, which is required by battery
manufacturers.
Although nickel prices have only started to recover from multi -year lows, we are increasingly
confident that prices must go significantly higher due to demand for battery mater ials sparked by
the Electric Vehicle (EV) revolution. EV penetration rates are growing more quickly than anyone
had imagined, and both nickel and cobalt are vital components of the lithium ion batteries that
power the green revolution.
The drilling campaign we are planning has three components.
Delineation drilling within the first three phases of mining outlined in our December 2011
Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) is designed to upgrade, in accordance with 43 -101
standards, the small amount of resources in those areas currently classified as Inferred Resources
to Measured or Indicated Resources. If successful, the rerating will enable us to advance our
engineering studies to pre-feasibility and then to the feasibility stage.
Step-out drilling from the known deposit is designed to increase the resource and may also lead to
discovery of more starter pits, like the two already known, where higher than average grade comes
right to surface.
We are also planning exploration drilling on high impact target areas. Our geologists have yet to
identify the roots of the ultramafic magmatic intrusive complex that hosts the Horsetrail deposit.
The roots of this type of system include feeder zones that can contain high grade massive sulphides.
It is postulated that these roots were faulted off from the main intrusive complex and transported
somewhere else. So where could this part of the system have gone?
Magnetic surveys show t hree large magnetic anomalies to the northwest of the main Turnagain
intrusive complex that could be fault offset sections of mineralized ultramafic rocks. Located
where there is either no bedrock exposure or the observed bedrock exposures do not explain the
elevated magnetic response, these anomalies represent “blind” targets that have never been tested.
We plan to test them with a drill this summer.
Every day seems to bring further news about the accelerating penetration of Electric Vehicles in
the automotive market, spending plans from car manufacturers and government initiativ es
regarding EV’s. With immense resources of nickel and cobalt, we are sitting in the sweet spot of
a fundamentals-driven commodity cycle that looks set to last for decades. I look forward to the
many milestones our company will achieve this year and beyond.
Mark Jarvis, President
January 2018
Scientific and technical information disclosed in this document has been reviewed and approved by David
Tupper, P. Geo., a Qualified Person consistent with NI 43-101.
This document includes the use of inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative
geologically to have economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as
mineral reserves. We also use the terms “measured” and “indicated” resources. We advise U.S. investors
that, while those terms are recognized and required by Canadian regulations, the U.S. Securities and
Exchange Commission does not recognize them. U.S. investors are cautioned not to assume that any part
or all of mineral deposits in these categories would ever be converted to reserves.