I've just spent some time flicking through the ASX announcements from Mincor from the end of 2018 through to the official start up of their Cassini mine in March 2021. I was curious of the steps and timing of Mincor signing up for BHP to concentrate Mincor's ore at BHP's Kambalda Nickel Concentrator and for BHP to buy that concentrate.
It turns out that Mincor already had a 20-year agreement in place with BHP but that old agreement expired in February 2019. The milestones from there were:
1. The two sides agreed a term sheet on 19 March 2019;
2. The formal Ore Tolling & Concentrate Purchase Agreement (OTCPA) was signed on 5 August 2019;
3. The Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) was released on 25 March 2020;
4. The Mincor Board formally approved the development of the mine on 17 September 2020; and
5. The mine was officially opened on 30 March 2021.
So it was as good as 2 years from when Mincor and BHP signed the term sheet to when the mine got into production. And it was as good as one year from the term sheet signing to the release of the DFS. This raises several questions for me regarding Widgie and its Armstrong nickel project.
Is it plausible for Widgie's boss, Steve Norregaard, to say that they will be ready to go mining anytime in 2023 (let alone by June)? That one is rhetorical ...
Does Widgie have a term sheet with BHP yet ?
Can Widgie do in a few months what Mincor took a couple of years to do? Borderline rhetorical
Is there anything that Widgie has to do before it can go to BHP for a chat or a term sheet? Metallurgical tests? In the December quarterly, released on 31 January, it was stated that those test results were pending at the end of December but there does not seem to have been any news on them since then. Have I missed that announcement? Also in the quarterly it was stated that there would be an "update" of the "full feasibility study" by the end of March and with only a couple of weeks to go all we have is crickets on that score as well.
Does BHP need the metallurgical test results before they can think of term sheeting or OTCPAing with Widgie? And does the full feasibility study require some commitment with BHP before it can be finalised?
The bottom line for me is that if Widgie has not already signed up to an OTCPA with BHP they have buckley's of completing the feasibility study let alone of moving into the development phase.
Also an issue not necessarily related to BHP but also suggesting that the timelines Widgie has been feeding us are sliding away...
I've found it frustrating that SN kept chopping between having the Armstrong nickel project either "production-ready" or in production by either the end of calendar 2023 or the end of June 2023. I had thought he had clarified his confusing statements by stating that there is a hard deadline of being into production by the end of calendar 2023 but an aspirational target of being production-ready by the end of June.
But in the December quarterly he seems to have once again walked back from his previous line:
But even after what he stated at the end of January he has reneged even further, in a presentation on 8 March. The meaning and insinuation of "development ready" is totally different to "production-ready" and a world away from being in production.
presentation of 8 March
(20min delay)