Just waiting for WM to show its worth
NICKEL
A good nickel hit
Nickel is usually found in two main ore types – sulphide or laterite.
Sulphides (class 1) are much cheaper and easier to turn into battery grade nickel sulphate than nickel laterites and fetch a higher price.
But supply of nickel sulphides is also declining because of a lack of new discoveries.
Looking for a good hit of nickel sulphide?
Jon Hronsky was one of Western Mining Corporation’s top geologists back in the day and is credited with leading the team that found the West Musgrave nickel and copper deposit on the WA-SA border in the late 1990s.
West Musgrave is one of only a handful of large scale nickel sulphide discoveries in WA in the past three decades. A decision on its $1.1 billion development by current owner OZ Minerals (ASX:OZL) is expected this year.
Now the boss at consultancy Western Mining Services, Hronsky knows just about every major nickel field in the world like the back of his hand.
He says a good nickel sulphide hit will typically be something at least 2m wide with around 1.5-2% nickel or higher. But … Context. Is. Everything.
“It’s never just about the results, it’s always about the context the results get fitted into,” he said.
“I know everyone looks at the highlight results and in fact companies deliberately emphasise results out of context because you know, a lot of investors, particularly the sort of more naive investors, do have that sort of heuristic, rule of thumb that they just respond to the actual numbers in intersections.”
