TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Toronto-based FNX Mining has made a new mineral discovery on its Victoria property in the Sudbury Basin, the company announced on Tuesday.

Shares in FNX rose 7,5%, to C$13,65 apiece by 16:33 in Toronto.

The company has discovered a new mineralised environment containing wide widths of “mining-camp grade” nickel, copper and precious metal mineralisation within multiple mineralised zones.

FNX currently has five surface drilling rigs on the Victoria property and plans to spend about C$7,2-million exploring the property this year.

"The discovery of a new blind mineralised environment containing multiple zones of mineralisation some 2 000 ft below surface on the Victoria property is a great tribute to the FNX exploration team,” said CEO Terry MacGibbon.

The company was formed in 2002, when it bought five Sudbury properties from what was then Inco, and has made nine discoveries on its Sudbury properties since then, four of which have been put into production.

“This new discovery represents the company's first significant involvement with offset dyke type of deposits, which have, and continue to be, mined extensively in the Sudbury mining camp,” MacGibbon commented.

“A great deal more work is required to fully understand this discovery and its possible economic potential.

“We will continue to aggressively drill the discovery throughout the year.”

The mineralised zones do not appear to outcrop at surface, but occur between 2 500 and 5 500 vertical feet below surface, FNX said.

The multiple mineralised zones occur within a previously unknown mineralized environment at Victoria and are located south of the historic Victoria mine's contact nickel orebodies and north of the previously-producing Totten mine offset dyke orebodies.

FNX is mining copper- and precious-metal-rich ore at its McCreedy West and Podolsky mines, after it halted nickel ore production last year in response to weak demand and prices for the metal.

The company scaled back exploration activities during 2008 and in the first half of 2009, but ramped up significantly in the second part of last year, after it completed a flow-through financing arrangement.

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