Ann: Environmental Licences granted for mining operation at Sconi, page-22

I am a JRV tragic (since 2005) so I remember about this Co talks from very old discussions I had with Duncan Pursell (who was the CEO of JRV for 3 decades and we just rolled him over 3 months ago in a coup and had a new team installed there @ JRV)...

in those days, it was not about Sc but all about Ni laterites with JRV... there was a decent Co grade all over the place BUT the problem was that in processing the Ni laterites, this precious Co was getting lost in the whole process... so the Co credits were actually being counted as ZERO...

mind you, the Ni was the hero at that time (talking of probably 2010 or so) and the PoNi was around $18,000 per ton or so (could be off by a few % but you get the point)... and Cobalt was probably the same or maybe even lower... but we were interested in getting the Ni processed, and in doing so if Co credits were lost, we wouldn't have lost some sleep...

but now, the whole game has changed... I don't think Ni will be the commodity under the spotlight... so the treatment will probably change too and the process will probably be to get Co out to the max and if there was a loss in the Ni recovery who cares (not that who cares but if we get Co to the max, then the process becomes commercially viable)...

the whole plan depended on HPAL to recover Ni from laterite which is very expensive and environmentally not too green... CSIRO and one Norwegian company tried a few things to get it going but not much could be achieved outside a table sized lab model in 10 years...

I think the focus should now change to recover Co and probably they can come up with a commercial model.... who knows...

(Disclaimer: I am quoting talks from 2010, so please consider the fact that I could have got figures wrong and some terminology too but you can get a rough idea about the JRV story)... hope this helps...