Amnesty international is all over Cobalt mined in the Congo by children. The big boys sooner or later are going to need a friendlier more stable supply for their batteries.
Perhaps even HC community will ramp BPL SP so high that they raise enough coin to buy out Conico's 50% on the Cobalt JV- and that would send the market into a frenzy for BPL Cobalt ambitions. Below it BAR/CNJ cobalt JV mineral resource- lots of drilling expenditure has already been made
The total Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resource above contains approximately 177,000 tonnes of nickel, 40,000 tonnes of cobalt and 274,000 tonnes of manganese.
Based on mining 12.5 million tonnes from the Indicated Mineral Resource, two 900,000 tonnes per annum conceptual flowsheets are currently under investigation. One utilising a paste thickener (Thickener) and the other using an ion exchange resin-in-pulp (RIP). Early studies indicate both flowsheet options have similar capital requirements of approximately $65-70 million (including 30% contingencies on plant and equipment and $20 million for site infrastructure). Unit operating costs were estimated at $5.50/pound of cobalt for the RIP option and $5.55/pound of cobalt for the Thickener option.
