JRV Cobalt, page-298

The Nico Young nickel / cobalt asset in NSW (JRV 100%) is a big sleeper imho.

In 2019 they finished a scoping study that including engineering and other significant work , which concluded heap leaching was viable.

The various members of the JRV exec and operating team are the individuals responsible for building, commissioning and operating theonly commercially successful heap leach nickel laterite deposit outside ofChina – the Murrin Murrin project in WA, when they were at Glencore.

They are understandably confident they could do this again at Nico Young, given the ores are similar to Murrin Murrin.

So what are they waiting for?

In 2019, they said for Nico Young to proceed, commodity prices needed to be a lot higher. Which they now are – TICK.

CEO Bryce Crocker also said that they would look to sell down their 100% equity to a jv partner who would fund the project development through to production.

I am increasingly confident that this deal can be concluded in 2022, as the mining majors look to increase their exposure to New Energy Materials, and end users (OEM’s) look to secure supply. BIG WATCH.

Strategically, the Brazilian refinery asset that JRV purchased last year (another fine acquisition) did process the Nico Young style ore before being mothballed.

Clearly, JRV are likely to build the Nico Young project into their future capacity projections for the Brazilian refinery – eventually processing ore that JRV could conceivably be free carried on, thereby capturing the lions share of upstream and midstream margin in the long term.