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The Newfoundland-based explorer has handed Core Critical Metals a path to 80 percent ownership of the Lucky Mike copper-silver-tungsten property, retaining a carried interest through to feasibility. The 7,675-hectare project sits just 20 kilometres from Teck’s Highland Valley — the country’s largest copper operation — at a time when copper futures are trading near $6 per pound and data-centre demand is rewriting the metal’s long-term outlook.
A Two-Stage Earn-In Worth Watching
First Atlantic Nickel (TSXV: FAN | OTCQB: FANCF) announced February 19 that it had signed an arm’s-length option agreement, dated February 18, with Core Critical Metals Corp. (TSXV: CCMC) for the Lucky Mike property in southern British Columbia, according to a GlobeNewswire filing. The deal gives Core Critical a decade-long runway to earn up to 80 percent of the project through $16 million in qualified exploration expenditures, split into two stages.
Stage 1 requires Core Critical to spend $5.7 million on exploration and pay $650,000 in cash or shares to First Atlantic within five years — earning a 70 percent interest. Stage 2 adds another $10 million in exploration over the subsequent five years, bringing Core Critical’s total stake to 80 percent. First Atlantic retains a 20 percent carried interest all the way through to delivery of a feasibility study, meaning the company faces no funding obligations during the exploration phase. If First Atlantic’s stake is later diluted below 10 percent, it converts to a 3 percent net smelter returns royalty, with a buyback option on 2 percent of that royalty for $7.5 million, as outlined in the option agreement. The transaction awaits TSX Venture Exchange approval for Core Critical.
The Neighbourhood Makes the Story
Lucky Mike’s location is arguably more compelling than the deal structure. The 37-claim property straddles the corridor between Kamloops and Merritt, adjacent to the Coquihalla Highway near the Surrey Lake summit — roughly 20 kilometres southeast of Teck Resources’ Highland Valley Copper mine. Highland Valley is Canada’s largest copper operation, producing more than 127,000 tonnes of copper in 2025 according to Teck’s own production update. Teck recently invested between $2.1 billion and $2.4 billion to extend the mine’s operational life to 2046, as reported by Mining Technology — a signal that the geological neighbourhood has decades of productive life ahead of it.
The property itself carries a historical resource estimate of 73.5 million tonnes grading 0.27 percent copper equivalent, translating to approximately 402 million pounds of contained copper (per Mining Technology’s analysis of prior operator data). That figure is classified as historical and does not conform to current CIM standards — Core Critical’s own filing cautions that significant re-drilling and verification work will be needed before it can be treated as a current resource. Still, the scale hints at genuine district potential. The property’s tungsten mineralisation has an even longer pedigree: in 1943, Canada’s Strategic Metals Committee drilled 14 diamond drill holes along a 100-metre strike length during wartime investigation into tungsten supply, Core Critical noted in its ACCESS Newswire release.
Copper’s Macro Tailwind
The timing of the deal coincides with a copper market in flux. COMEX copper futures are trading near $5.90 per pound, up roughly 27 percent year-on-year according to Trading Economics data. LME copper hit a record $13,387 per tonne on January 6 before retreating, per Goldman Sachs Research. The rally has been driven by a convergence of structural forces: data-centre expansion, grid infrastructure buildout, and electric vehicle demand are all copper-intensive. JPMorgan’s head of base metals strategy, Gregory Shearer, estimates that data-centre copper demand alone could reach 475,000 tonnes in 2026, up from 110,000 tonnes in 2025 — a fourfold jump that reflects what Wood Mackenzie’s Peter Schmitz has described as “inelastic demand” from developers who use copper regardless of price.
The longer-term picture is even more striking. S&P Global projects that global copper demand will surge from 28 million tonnes in 2025 to 42 million tonnes by 2040, but without meaningful supply expansions, the market faces a 10-million-tonne shortfall. Goldman Sachs Research forecasts the LME copper price at $15,000 per tonne by 2035, well above current levels. Yet the near-term outlook is more mixed: Goldman estimates the global copper market recorded a 600-kilotonne surplus in 2025, the largest since 2009, and Chinese demand for refined copper fell 8 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter. The possibility of a 15 percent US tariff on refined copper — which Goldman’s base case expects by mid-2026 — adds another layer of uncertainty, and today’s Supreme Court ruling striking down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs has only complicated the trade-policy calculus for Canadian resource companies.
What First Atlantic Keeps — and What It Frees Up
For First Atlantic, the deal is a capital-preservation play. The company retains exposure to Lucky Mike’s upside through the carried interest and an existing 2 percent NSR royalty on the property, while directing its cash toward the Pipestone XL Smelter-Free Nickel-Cobalt Alloy Project in central Newfoundland — its flagship asset. In January, First Atlantic reported a 50 percent increase in the RPM Zone strike length to over 1.2 kilometres from Phase 2x drilling at Pipestone XL, and separately closed a $3.07 million LIFE private placement (with no warrant and CEO participation of one million shares), per the company’s GlobeNewswire filings.
The junior mining sector has seen a surge of earn-in deals in recent months as companies seek to monetise non-core assets without outright sales — a structure that lets optionors retain upside while shifting exploration risk to partners with deeper pockets. Whether $16 million over ten years is enough to unlock Lucky Mike’s historical resource will depend on what Core Critical finds when it starts drilling. The geology of Teck’s Highland Valley next door is encouraging — but as Core Critical’s own filing is careful to state, the geology of nearby properties is not necessarily indicative of what lies beneath Lucky Mike.
