Victory Nickel has received approval from its board of directors to begin the financing process for a new mine development that could potentially be larger than HudBay’s project in Snow Lake. In September, the Toronto-based company received a key environmental licence for the Minago sulphide nickel mine, located approximately 90km north of Grand Rapids. Victory Nickel has been working the property for several years, spending several million dollars drilling and developing the site. However, this is small in comparison to the USD 500 to 600 million it will cost to fully develop the property, which company officials say holds one of the biggest undeveloped nickel deposits in the country. In addition to nickel, the property also contains significant deposits of frac sand, a valuable input used in some of the more complex oil and gas drilling technologies. The sand would have to be removed to access the ore, so its extraction would not add to costs. Instead, it would greatly improve the economics for Victory Nickel in the development model for Minago. The company says they will require USD 75 million to begin development of the project this winter and maintain it until the end of 2012. The money would be used to remove water from the property, conduct early site work, construct an electrical supply and distribution system and remove the top 10m of overburden.