TITAN RESOURCES-Article from Mining News

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It has taken Western Australian-based junior
Titan Resources just three-years to move
its revolutionary BioHeap technology from
the laboratory to the world stage.
Titan’s technology, which uses bacteria to
leach base metals from sulphide ores, has the
potential to revolutionise the way large-scale,
low-grade base metal orebodies are treated.
Titan managing director Bill Ryan told
RESOURCESTOCKS on a recent visit to the
company’s Radio Hill mine, located 30km
from Karratha in Western Australia, although
the company was satisfied “the BioHeap
process works, the next step for Titan was to
make it commercial”.
And that is what Titan is just about to do.
Many of the world’s largest nickel producers
such as WMC and Inco are testing the
BioHeap technology, however, it was China’s
largest nickel miner Jinchuan Non-Ferrous
Metals Corporation which was the first move
to bed down a commercial agreement with
Titan.
Titan announced in late-April it had begun
formal negotiations with JMC to create a joint
venture agreement to commercialise the
BioHeap process in China.
Although Titan is keen to get some
commercial runs on the board for BioHeap,
Ryan who recently returned from a trip to the
Gansu province in Western China, said he was
aware of the market’s concern of investing
too heavily in the world’s largest communist
nation.
“China is a seriously foreign country,” Ryan
said.“We want to take it in stages.”
Market trepidation aside, Titan’s JMC
agreement has huge potential for the Perth
junior’s share growth.
JMC has proven resources of 460 million
tonnes of nickel sulphide ore containing 4Mt
of nickel.The company produces 48,000t per
annum of nickel metal, accounting for 88% of
China’s total output, along with 60,000t of
copper and 1000t of cobalt.
Ryan said Titan has signed a memorandum
of understanding with JMC to form a jointly
owned Chinese technology company, with
Titan having 75% control. The joint venture
company will charge a fee, per tonne, to
provide the bacteria to treat the nickel
sulphide ore.
The company, which has yet to be named,
would own the BioHeap technology in China
only, Ryan said.
Initially, the joint venture aims to mine,
construct and operate a trial heap of
200,000t of JMC ore in the first phase, which
should start late this year or in early 2003.
If successful, Titan then plans to boost
production from an initial 1Mtpa operation in
2005 to an annual capacity of 1.8Mt.
Ryan said it would cost Titan as little as $1
million to set-up and staff a laboratory in
China’s Gansu province.
“If the initial phase is successful we will
make some serious money,” Ryan said.
Titan is currently testing a large sample of
JMC ore in laboratory column trials which,
after a pre-acidification phase, is producing
positive results.
Titan is in the final stages of pilot testing
the BioHeap process on two 5000t heaps at
the Radio Hill mine (ore was sourced from
Titan’s low-grade Mt Sholl deposit).
[titan resources]
Titan Resources stands on the verge of signing its first commercial
deal for its BioHeap technology with China’s largest nickel producer,
Jinchuan Non-Ferrous Metals Corporation.
By Sinéad Mangan
Titan spawns first offshore
“bacterial bugs” deal
Titan Resources managing director Bill Ryan
... “What we are trying to do is very difficult
for a small Western Australian company and
a lot depends on our discussions with
partners. We now have the Chinese on
board and I suspect we will shortly get
to an agreement with WMC.”
Titan is currently testing an ion
exchange nickel recovery unit,
belonging to a Dutch subsidiary of
Outokumpu of Finland. The system
removes the need for electrowinning
circuits or the precipitation methods
currently used in base metal mines.
Titan is currently testing an ion
exchange nickel recovery unit,
belonging to a Dutch subsidiary of
Outokumpu of Finland. The system
removes the need for electrowinning
circuits or the precipitation methods
currently used in base metal mines.
2 page titan for isaac 16/5/02 12:57 PM Page 1
Although bacterial oxidation and nonbacterial
heap leaching are established
technologies in the gold and copper
industries, Titan group microbiologist Tamsin
Williams explains their combined use in nickel
extraction is unique.
“The BioHeap process treats coarse
crushed ore, so avoids costly grinding and
concentration steps usually involved in
bacterial oxidation techniques,”Williams said.
To look at Titan’s trial heaps, it is hard to
imagine the process being transposed to larger
mountains of ore, however,Williams said the
pilot plant has continually returned positive
results, at times returning as high as 90%
extraction of the contained nickel in solution.
And Titan is certainly hedging its bets during
the trial process at Radio Hill, testing every
possible mining scenario through the pilot plant.
“The idea is to know in advance how the
process will deal with various conditions,” said
Williams.
Williams said Titan was currently testing
the BioHeap process on chalcopyrite ores
due to the large interest generated in the
process from South America’s copper mines.
It is also breeding a salt tolerant bacteria,
which will be suitable to areas without good
quality water supply such as the WA’s Eastern
Goldfields.
Part of the work at Radio Hill also includes
testing a space age looking ion exchange
nickel recovery unit, belonging to a Dutch
subsidiary of Outokumpu of Finland.
The ion exchange unit uses a specialised
resin (supplied by American Purity System), to
directly recover metals from the BioHeap
leach system without the prior removal of
dissolved iron. The end result is almost pure
metal in solution.
The system removes the need for
electrowinning circuits or the precipitation
methods currently used in base metal mines.
Ryan said if Titan was to commercialise the
ion exchange circuit, the company might look
to “trade in nickel intermediates” for the
lucrative chemical industry.
He said Titan was keen to trial BioHeap
commercially on bigger orebodies to test
how the process transposes to larger
stockpiles of ore.
“We have to get this process to real
orebodies because that is where fundamental
problems could be found,” Ryan said. “To date
BioHeap has surpassed all of our expectations.
But until we put this into production on our
own deposits I think it may be difficult to secure
JVs to our satisfication, except of course in the
case of the Chinese who are extremely keen.”
However, Ryan said Titan is pretty keen to
have its own commercial BioHeap operation
up-and-running “some time early to mid next
year”.
Titan’s options for commercial
development of BioHeap include its own
Carr Boyd Rocks project, located 80km
north-west of Kalgoorlie, or a deal with
WMC, which is interested in the technology
for either its Leinster or Mt Keith low-grade
dumps.
At present Carr Boyd just falls short of
tonnes, so Titan has started a $750,000
drilling program with the aim of increasing the
500,000t resource, grading about 1.3% nickel
to about 1Mt.
“We would hope Carr Boyd will be one of
two operations which will give us our first
commercial BioHeap operation,” Ryan said.
Ore at Titan’s Mt Sholl low-grade deposit,
located close to Radio Hill, is also under
consideration.
Ryan said the company has yet to decide
the fate of the north Widgiemooltha deposit,
which it purchased from WMC last year.
Titan’s long-term objective is to market the
BioHeap technology to leverage into equity
positions of between 20-40% in major metals
projects.
Ryan said he was keen for the company to
remain a mining stock, rather than a
technology stock. However, that will now be
made more difficult as the company’s cash
cow, the Radio Hill mine which it bought from
Resolute in 1997, is just about out of ore. Staff
at Radio Hill are winding down operations
with the mine closure scheduled for August.
The mine produced 10,297t of nickel
concentrate containing over 1242t of nickel,
68t of cobalt and 1229oz of palladium in the
December quarter at an average cash cost of
US$1.05 per pound of nickel, making it one of
the lower cost producers in the world.
Over its four years of production Radio
Hill has continually tipped dollars into Titan’s
coffers, allowing the company to safely pursue
its technology dreams. Titan has spent more
than $12 million developing BioHeap.
However, Ryan said Titan, which has $14
million in cash available, is currently scouting
for another Radio Hill.
Titan’s status as a mining technology
company as opposed to a straight-up-anddown
“rocks stock” may be inevitable as the
company moves closer to the
commercialisation of BioHeap.
However, Ryan predicts once the process
is proven on larger orebodies, large share
growth is in store for Titan shareholders.
“What we are trying to do is very difficult
for a small Western Australian company and a
lot depends on our discussions with
partners,” Ryan said. “We now have the
Chinese on board and I suspect we will
shortly get to an agreement with WMC.”
50 May/June 2002 RESOURCESTOCKS
titan resources
... at a glance
HEAD OFFICE
1st floor
24 Outram Street
West Perth,WA 6005
Ph: (08) 9481 6040
Fax: (08) 9481 6035
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.titanresources.com.au
DIRECTORS
Richard Tastula, Bill Ryan, Felix Pole,
Neil MacLachlan, Malcolm Randall,
Peter Thomas and Flavio Garofalo
(alternate director, company secretary).
MARKET CAPITALISATION
$27.2 million (at press time)
MAJOR SHAREHOLDERS
CSFB Private Equity (19.99%)
David John Reed (5.65%)
Golden Prospect Plc (2.5%)
TIR Share Price
12 Months
Share Price
$0.12
$0.14
$0.16
$0.18
$0.20
$0.22
$0.24
$0.26
$0.28
Source: Paterson Ord Minnett
Titan Resources’ group microbiologist Tamsin Williams said the company is testing every
possible mining scenario through its BioHeap pilot plant ... “The idea is to know
in advance how the [BioHeap] process will deal with various conditions.”
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