HRR MD quoted as saying that they intend to produce a "concentrate" of sorts from a laterite. In conjunction with this, one of the slides from the Investor Briefing released on 16 June clearly showed Heron bringing coal to Yerilla.
All which means they're intending to produce a nickel pig iron at Yerilla for shipping to China.
Pig iron smelters in China import asian laterite feed at >1.8% Ni and produce 6-7%Ni 'concentrate' for around US$800/t, right next to large coal deposits with low labour costs. Yet the Yirilla project shows ~50Mt of the 135Mt resource is greater than 0.9%, only 40% of which is beneficiatable for a maximum upgrade of 33%.
So with a feed grade at ~1.3%Ni, upgraded to 8-10% 'concentrate', wouldn't it be far cheaper and more realistic to do AL at $5.70/lb as they had initially sought to do?
Anyone know more about what they're possible intending to do?
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