In the last decade, China’s manufacturing and building boom spurred a demand for nickel, about 25 percent of the global demand for this metal. Nickel is used there – and elsewhere -- for electroplating, alloy factories and stainless-steel. Though stainless steel production is slow right now, when it does rebound, China will be leading the call for this essential mineral.

This is why Goldbrook Ventures is so pleased to have a partner in Beijing, a partner willing to buy all the nickel-copper-PGE ore they can deliver. Brian Grant, President and COO of Goldbrook Ventures, told us all about it in March 2009 at PDAC.

Goldbrook Ventures explores for nickel-copper-platinum group element (Ni-Cu-PGE) sulphide deposits in the Raglan District of Northern Quebec. This class of mineral deposit is protected against price swings because it contains a suite of economic metals and has strong long-term supply-demand fundamentals.

In 2003, Goldbrook's management initiated an aggressive program of ground acquisition and joint ventures in the Raglan District. Today, it is the single largest holder of mineral rights within the Raglan belt, which arguably contains one of the world's most profitable Ni-Cu-PGE mines (Xstrata). It has a 100% interest in 891,000 acres (3600 km2) there.

Which is why in 2008, Goldbrook entered into a joint venture option agreement with Jilin Jien Nickel Industry Co. Ltd. of Panshi, Jilin China. Jien is one of China’s largest producers of nickel, copper and cobalt, as well as other nickel (Ni) products including Ni chloride, Ni fluoride, Ni acetate, Ni hydroxide, Ni matte and electrolytic Ni.

Funding for Exploration and Production

According to Grant, Jien may earn increasing percentages of interest in the Raglan property profits by providing funding for exploration and development. In 2008, Jien contributed $12.5 million to Goldbrook to meet the first year’s minimum exploration expenditure.

“Jien has their own nickel mines in northern China and they're looking for concentrate over the long term. So our partnership is an ideal one where we receive long term financing for exploration development, and they have a very good opportunity to secure concentrate for the nickel and copper, cobalt that they need for their smelter,” said Grant.

Goldbrook, which had been self-financing through 2008, will eventually receive $45 million in exploration financing over three years, which will give Jien a 50 percent interest in the property. As Grant explained, “Jien has the opportunity to increase their share by fully funding feasibility, environmental, metallurgical studies and bringing the property into production if we identify economic ore zones. So, right now if we are successful, JJ Nickel will fully fund everything right into production.”

“In any climate, this would be really good, but right now it's particularly useful because, it’s almost impossible to raise money on the open market without a serious dilution of the company,” Grant added. “So we're quite pleased and Jien’s quite happy as well. They are good partners to have because they are looking at the longer term, 10 or 20 years down the road. They plan to be in business and they are going to need a lot of concentrate, so the Raglan Belt and our property position up there is a real opportunity for them as well as us.”

Lured by the Remote Areas of Northern Quebec

Goldbrook’s properties at Raglan are by far the current center of attention for exploration. The Raglan region is located in the Cape Smith Fold Belt – an east-west trending belt approximately 325 km long in the Ungava Peninsula of Northern Quebec.

Brian Grant, President and COO of Goldbrook Ventures, has been in the mining business for almost 40 years. One of his early experiences was with the senior mining company Falconbridge, which is where he became acquainted with the Donaldson and Katinniq deposits within the Raglan Belt.

“And that's really what attracted me to Goldbrook, its land position on the Raglan,” said Grant. “Most of our resources are on the project and our team of geologists and administrators are almost fully employed just looking after this project, which is quite a large one.”

Grant, who had just returned from a meeting with Jien in Beijing, told us that Goldbrook has already received $6.4 million of the $15 million financing it expects for 2009. He said the partnership is a good match of personalities, both among technical and executive staff. “We think very much the same and are looking at the same opportunities, so we get along quite well,” he said.

“They are very definitely supportive of exploration going forward, and want to start getting into a development phase as soon as possible. While they are aware of the economic downturn, they are looking further ahead than the next year or two,” he said.

This level of economic support with Raglan will also allow Goldbrook to investigate other opportunities and other projects, with an eye toward expanding their resource space over the next year or so.

“So, it's not all doom and gloom looking into the future. The Chinese growth rate is down but they're still expanding. So, although things are tight, the longer term is not really as bad as some of the media would have us believe,” Grant said.

Jilin Jien is a highly diversified company with their own Ni-Cu-Co-PGE mines, in properties similar to Raglan. In northern China, they also have a smelting complex where they produce a wide variety of nickel products for the Chinese manufacturing and steel industry. Working under their parent company, Jilin HOROC Nonferrous Metal Group Co. Ltd, which is much larger and more diversified, they can feed products through their sister companies and HOROC itself.

“When we were in China, we visited their facilities and saw their new smelter, which hasn't been activated yet, but they've just put the finishing touches on it,” he said.

Though Grant couldn’t specify the exact grade of nickel concentrate that would be shipped to Jilin Jien, he said that they were told the Chinese smelter currently uses about eight percent nickel concentrate. “They can then double production by just simply increasing the grade of the concentrate. We’ll try to match whatever specifications they need. They'll take all the concentrate that we can produce and they’ll be looking for a fairly substantial amount of material to feed their new smelter complex,” Grant said.

A Well-Balanced Management Team

Brian Grant joined Goldbrook as their President and Chief Operating Officer, in January 2008. He started out 40 years earlier in the Maritimes and worked in almost every province in Canada in the exploration industry, and more recently as a Director of the British Columbia Geological Survey. Over the years he has been involved in exploration for diamonds, various metals principally nickel, copper, gold and uranium, for many Canadian companies that have since been absorbed in takeovers and mergers. Grant’s activities included exploring in Peru, hunting for diamonds in Africa, managing gold and base and alloy metals projects for BP-Selco, and exploring for uranium in the southern Athabasca Basin for Uranerz Exploration and Mining, and now working again in the remote Raglan Belt of the eastern Arctic.

David Baker is Goldbrook’s chairman and CEO. With more than 25 years experience in the financial industry, Baker’s expertise in managing and financing junior mining companies has given Goldbrook a significant business advantage.

Walter Peredery, a director of the Company, has worked worldwide in mineral exploration for 40 years, leading exploration teams that have discovered Ni-Cu-PGE ore deposits in the Thompson Nickel Belt and footwall Cu-PGE mineralization in the Sudbury Basin.

“I look after the geology and the project work, and Dave Baker is the financial side of the organization,” said Grant. “We’ve got a great new geoscience team in place. Jamie Pardy PGeo., is our exploration manager and our crew is very experienced in a wide variety of commodities, including nickel. They're quite keen and eager to continue working up there.”

For Grant, working with nickel deposits is a lot of fun. He likes the fun of being in a belt that’s fairly pristine and undeveloped, combined with the reassurance of output from the operating mines near there.

“Dealing with the ultramafic rocks within the Raglan setting is, for a geologist, pretty amazing,” he said. “The minerals are unique, the setting is quite intriguing and it is a challenge to try to solve where the sulphide systems are located. The magmatic nickel sulphide systems that you find in the Raglan are very similar to the deposits in Thompson and Kambalda in Australia,” he said.

Because of the remote setting and the arctic conditions, Raglan hasn't had the attention of some other belts over the years. As a new magmatic sulphide belt that hasn’t been well explored since the late '50s and '70s, it presents a lot of opportunity.

“We've got a very large ground position, but in reality we have just scratched the surface of collecting data, doing the geology, gathering the geophysics to interpret where some of these drill targets may be. So, we're looking at a belt of rocks that probably could sustain our company for the next 50 years in regards to exploration. It doesn’t get much better from a geologist’s point of view.”

Right now, Goldbrook has five magmatic sulphide systems which look like they will be able to be mined in the short term. Ahead is the resource estimation and feasibility work to bring those to the resource stage over the next year or two.

Solving a Mystery

One of these systems is the Mystery prospect -- about 10 kilometers west of Goldbrook’s Getty-Sylvie deposits – that appears to be one of the larger nickel sulphide systems found in the Raglan. In September 2008, Goldbrook had completed 37 drill holes of 8388.4 meters, which indicated the potential for a major new Ni-Cu-PGE sulphide zone at Mystery.

The 2008 Mystery drill program was focused on testing an extensive, coincident EM and magnetic response from a 2007 airborne VTEM geophysical survey, and a very strong downhole EM anomaly obtained during the 2007 drill program.

One hole, (DDH MYS08-003) intersected 131 meters of a semi-massive and massive sulphides. The grade at Mystery is averaging three quarters of a percent or more for each of copper and nickel, with significant cobalt and platinum group elements also contained within the nickel sulphides.

The 2008 exploration program at Mystery has established Ni-Cu-PGE sulphide system within the Belanger trend which appears to confirm a vertical to steeply dipping, mineralized zone varying in thickness from about 10 to 60 meter thickness along a strike length of over 175 meters and a vertical depth of over 300 meters.

In November 2008, the company announced that drill hole MYS08-011, on Section 490900 East, intersected 28 meters of nickel sulphide slightly below 300 meters vertical depth. Drill hole MYS08-005, on Section 490850, encountered a 46-metre sulphide intersection and includes a 4-metre section containing an average of 41.30 g/t PGE+Au, including 9.85 g/t platinum.

“We had one section with about ten grams of platinum and combined forty odd grams of platinum-palladium, which is a real sweetener when you start thinking about mining this sort of material,” Grant said. He explained that when Goldbrook sells concentrate to Jilin Jien, it will get credit from the smelter on platinum metal, and other metals which are economically viable.

Asked why investors should consider Goldbrook, Grant focuses on the quality of the management and technical team, and his expectations to be very successful in discovering and developing the Raglan sulphide systems over the next few years.

“Goldbrook has almost 50 percent of the productive geology within the Raglan Belt,” he added. “Although there is a lot of exploration yet to be done, there's a very high potential for new discoveries and additional development. So, I think over the coming years we're probably going to be finding and producing more from that belt.”

With many older mining areas coming to the end of their life, Grant expects to see a lot of the bigger companies shutting down nickel operations around the world, operations that are expensive to operate and are running out of ore. As he put it, “the Raglan is a fairly underdeveloped area of the world for sulphide nickel and has a lot of potential to help replace some of those producers. We are right there in the forefront to be able to do so.”

For more information:

http://www.goldbrookventures.com  

Goldbrook Ventures Inc. 
1550 - 200 Burrard Street 
Vancouver, BC Canada V6C 3L6 

Telephone: 604 683 8083 
Fax: 604 683 8087 
Toll Free: 1 888 488 9884 

Email: info@goldbrookventures.com