something to read, page-2

this is 10/2/2007 but I like it....

The Australian
Golden opportunity: it pays to look behind the headlines
PURE SPECULATION
Robin Bromby

YOU hear the analysts say nickel is going to fall 40 per cent in value (Merrill Lynch, for example) and then you look at what the Chinese are doing in the real world - getting their hands on every bit of metal they can, that's what.

An arm of the Guangdong provincial government is running the ruler over the laterite nickel-cobalt project near Young, NSW, owned by Jervois Mining. Not only is this a laterite deposit, hard enough in itself, but Jervois has had to develop its own chloride leach technology to extract the metal.

That, despite good results in early tests, is still years away from being proven as financially and technically robust. But the Chinese are clearly taking the long-term view, and apparently money will be no object if they like what they see.

Jervois has been working on the technology for more than two years. The company is more tortoise than hare; it started looking in the mid-1990s for an economic deposit of scandium (used in high-intensity lights), so far without success, but is not giving up.

A plodder, but a persistent one.

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