When the ground keeps giving back more than you put in, the story stops being about exploration and starts being about building a mine. Tartisan Nickel’s latest drill hole at Kenbridge came back with 11 metres of high-grade nickel and copper at depth — backed by a second spike of nearly 5% nickel over 2 metres that few deposits anywhere can match. For a project that already has a shaft in the ground, a road in, and a mine plan on paper, these results are not a discovery — they are a confirmation. The next step is a pre-feasibility study.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
- Deep Grade: Hole KB26-208 returned 11.0 metres of 1.05% nickel and 0.33% copper, including 2.0 metres of 4.79% nickel and 1.25% copper, plus an additional 3.5 metres of 2.87% nickel and 0.81% copper within the same zone.
- Model Tightening: This is the second infill hole of the 2026 program, targeting a zone with over 1 million tonnes of greater than 1% nickel that the company is working to move into higher-confidence categories ahead of pre-feasibility.
- Scale Program: 2,700 metres of drilling have been completed across the first three holes, with results from the third hole still pending and the fourth hole now drilling below the existing 622-metre shaft to test how deep this deposit really goes.
- Established Economics: The Updated PEA outlines a 9-year underground mining operation at 1,500 tonnes per day, with a pre-tax NPV of $182.5 million and a 26% internal rate of return.
- Critical Minerals: Kenbridge hosts Class 1 battery-grade nickel in one of the most mining-friendly jurisdictions on the planet, directly in the crosshairs of North American critical mineral strategy for EVs, energy storage and supply chain security.
STRATEGIC IMPLICATIONS
For decades, the world has sourced nickel from offshore operations that are expensive to run, difficult to regulate and increasingly exposed to political risk. The result is a supply chain that North American manufacturers, defense agencies and battery makers have grown deeply uncomfortable depending on. Legacy producers have failed to bring new, high-grade, domestically sourced nickel online fast enough to close that gap.
Kenbridge is the kind of asset that makes that problem smaller. It sits in northwestern Ontario with a shaft already sunk, a road already built, environmental baseline work already years deep, and active relationships with seven First Nations communities. It is not a greenfield dream — it is an advanced project hitting high-grade results and moving methodically toward a pre-feasibility study. Each new drill hole either confirms what is already known or expands what the deposit could become, and the current program is doing both.
The timing could not be better aligned. Critical minerals have become a matter of national security on both sides of the border. The U.S. Department of Defense is actively backing domestic supply. Canada is accelerating its own critical mineral strategy. In that environment, a fully-owned, high-grade, road-accessible nickel and copper project with a mine plan already in hand does not stay small-cap forever.
CEO MARK APPLEBY:
“These are the kind of numbers that get people’s attention. We’ve got the goods here — high grade, right where we need it, and it keeps showing up. We’re heading into pre-feasibility this summer, and every hole we turn makes that a stronger story.”
INVESTOR TAKEAWAY
The world is running short on nickel and copper it can actually trust — mined safely, in stable jurisdictions, without a shipping container crossing three oceans. Kenbridge is already built into the ground, already permitted to advance, and already hitting the grades that make mine plans work. With a pre-feasibility study targeted for summer 2026 and drill results arriving hole by hole, Tartisan is not waiting for the market to come to it. It is building the kind of asset that larger players in a supply-starved industry will find very hard to ignore.
Tags: copper, EV, nickel, penny stocks, small cap, small cap stocks, small caps