TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Project generator Transition Metals and project partner Impala Platinum (Implats) were on Tuesday awarded the Bernie Schneiders Discovery of the Year Award as recognition for the Sunday Lake platinum discovery near Thunder Bay, Ontario.

The award was presented by the Northwestern Ontario Prospectors Association (NWOPA) to representatives of the discovery team at the yearly awards dinner hosted during 2014 Northwestern Ontario Mines and Minerals Symposium in Thunder Bay.

“It confirms our conviction that Northwestern Ontario remains a great place to explore. Northwestern Ontario is a low-cost, stable jurisdiction with great infrastructure and a skilled workforce that continues to prove itself to be a rewarding region to make discoveries,” NWOPA awards committee member Don Hoy said in congratulating the discovery team.

Transition had in January first announced that a recent drilling campaign in partnership with South Africa's Implats, at its 50%-owned Sunday Lake project, had confirmed platinum group metals mineralisation.

The company said that one drill is currently on site to drill 2 500 m, and that it planned to focus on expanding the extent of mineralisation intersected during the discovery programme. Geophysical crews had been mobilised to site to conduct borehole electromagnetic surveys in accessible holes completed during the discovery programme.

TSX-V-listed Transition had previously said that of the six diamond drill holes completed, for a total of 2 546 m, four returned intersections containing significant platinum-rich mineralisation, including hole SL-13-002, which intersected 20.2 m containing 3.22 g/t of combined precious metals platinum, palladium and gold (PGMs).

The company had found a large intrusion similar to other intrusions in the Midcontinental Rift (MCR). The MCR is a 2 000-km-long geological rift in the centre of North America that formed when the North American craton began to split apart about 1.1-billion years ago.

Other intrusions in the area that are known to be mineralised include Panoramic Resources’ nearby Thunder Bay North PGM project, Rio Tinto’s Tamarack, in Minnesota, and Lundin Mining’s Eagle mine, in Michigan, to which the Sunday Lake project had shown similarities.