Prophesizing Shakespeare's future: north shore Nickel property reconfigured for future operations.

• Author: Kelly, Lindsay
• Position: MINING

The year 2011 was a tough one for Ursa Major Minerals.

Last June, a dissenting group of stakeholders sought to replace the board due to a lagging performance on the TSX. Their advances were rebuffed, but then operations at the company's Shakespeare property west of Sudbury were halted when a processing agreement couldn't be renegotiated with Xstrata Nickel for the use of its Strathcona Mill.

That's where things stood until July when Ursa merged with Prophecy Platinum Corp., and now the discord has been laid to rest, according to Prophecy's president and CEO John Lee. With a vote of 98.9 per cent in favour of the merger, stakeholders showed a vote of confidence in having a larger company carrying the project forward, Lee said.

"I wouldn't say we're one happy family ... but I think we've comfortably put all that behind us and reunited in a way to look for ways to advance Prophecy Platinum going forward," he added.

Now the company is refocusing its efforts on Shakespeare, a nickel-copper-PGM interest located 70 km west of Sudbury near the town of Webbwood. Lee said the company is concentrating on "clearing up the accounts payable" and putting out an updated resource estimate based on the drilling that's occured in the last year

Over the year, the company delivered a total of 151,910 tonnes of ore to the Strathcona Mill at a grade of 0.314 per cent nickel, 0.368 per cent copper, 0.019 per cent cobalt, 0.348 g/t platinum, 0.389 g/t palladium, 0.203 g/t gold and 2.164 g/t silver.

In reshaping its efforts, the company will also seek out more streamlined alternatives for operations at Shake-speare. Ursa formerly outsourced all aspects of the operation to contractors; equipment was rented and labour was contracted, and with no mill on site, ore was trucked to Strathcona Mill for processing, following which contractors were again hired for smelting.

It all made for a very cost-prohibitive process, which was exacerbated later in the year by falling nickel prices. Lee said Prophecy will look at alternatives like setting up its own mill and trucking the concentrate instead of the ore, as well as...