Ann: Updated Resource provides more Nickel at Black Swan, page-67

Hi Kip,

The issue with the Black Swan Disseminated Ore is that there are large areas of it with a high talc content. Conventional smelters can't process concentrate with too high a MgO to Fe ratio and conventional separation techniques can't get rid of the MgO. The 1.1Mtpa BFS was based on only using the Serpentinite ore from Black Swan and blending it with the high grade from silver and gold Swan underground to get an acceptable product for conventional smelting. The down side to this was that the BFS only nominated 3.3Mt of the Black Swan Ore as suitable (equivalent to 22kt of the 181kt of contained Nickel).

This latest update says there is an increase in contained Nickel, but the critical point for the 1.1Mtpa BFS is how much of that is Serpentinite... More Nickel only means better economics for the 2.2 BFS, if it's all high MgO stuff the 1.1 BFS may have got worse.