Canada Nickel Company CEO speaks to Timmins Chamber members

The Timmins business community recently heard from Mark Selby, the chairman, CEO and director for Canada Nickel Company. Selby recently spoke during a luncheon, hosted by the Timmins Chamber of Commerce.

The topic of interest for Timmins, is the company's Crawford Nickel-Cobalt Sulphide project, located on Highway 655 near the Highway 11 intersection.

Selby wants to keep local business owners up-to-date on progress so they can be ready for when production begins.

“These are the people who are going to help build this project and so we’re making sure they know where we are; and the process; and where we think we’re going to be getting to; and you know what some of the opportunities for them might look like," said Selby.

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Nickel is the mineral needed for electric vehicle batteries and Selby said the Crawford project and the company's nearly two dozen other properties in the area, give it an opportunity that only comes once in a generation.

The president of the Timmins Chamber of Commerce, Dan Ayotte, said he feels Selby is advising Timmins to get ready. Ayotte said Selby is informing business owners in the local industrial, trade, and manufacturing sectors that the company is "going to buy your products and services from our great town of Timmins and grown this town."

Selby also said with how close the Crawford project will be to highways, rail lines and hydro dams, it will make a low carbon footprint. Attendees also heard how the company has the potential to create a large-scale carbon storage facility as when exposed to air, the waste rock from its mining process captures and retains carbon dioxide from the air.

“I think the opportunity to have this carbon storage in the area, creates the potential for a zero carbon industrial cluster, so again I think it’s exciting times for the entire region," said Selby.

“I thought that was amazing that we’re going to have something like that in our backyard," said Ayotte. "It’s going to show the world what we have in Timmins.”

Pending the permitting process, Selby said construction at the Crawford site is planned for mid 2025 and production to begin in late 2027.