Eureka report on nickel & cobalt (Aug 2023)

I've been doing a bit more research/digging regarding Nico and found a Eureka Report article that is recent and relevant. The article is titled 'Critical Metals Approaching Critical Mass' and discusses HPAL tech for MHP and a significant recent announcement regarding a Japanese consortium investment in a project with a similar CAPEX as NC1's. The article was published 1 Aug 2023 so is still fairly fresh.

The article is behind a paywall so I won't paste all of it (Google the title and you can get a free trial subscription to read it in full), but there were a few paragraphs that seemed interesting for Nico:

"Nickel for Batteries

The reason Ravensthorpe and Murrin Murrin have returned to the centre stage of nickel mining is that are both now working successfully and able to produce a product called Mixed Hydroxide Precipitate (MHP) – the form of nickel preferred by battery makers.

There is also heightened interest in Australian nickel because processing here does not involve clearing rain forest to get to the ore as is the case in Indonesia. Another problem with metal from that country being that supply is tightly controlled by Chinese mining companies.

For BHP, demand for MHP came too late to save its investment in Ravensthorpe but changing demand for nickel has seen it switch the focus of the 50-year-old Kwinana nickel refinery from producing briquettes of pure nickel metal for the stainless-steel industry to producing a nickel sulfate powder for battery customers.

Japanese Interest

Enter Japan, a long-term investor in Australian resources and the country which played a critical role in launching Australia’s rare earth’s industry through a funding agreement and commitment to buy most of the material produced from the Mt Weld mine of Lynas Rare Earths.

This time it’s nickel which has attracted a consortium of Japanese trading houses, Sumitomo, Mitsui and Mitsubishi, which is investing in the long-forgotten Goongarrie project in WA which last made headlines in the HPAL rush of the 1990s, but never made it off the drawing board.

The prime asset of Ardea Resources (ASX: ARL), a mining minnow valued on the stock market at $118 million, Goongarrie, part of the broader Kalgoorlie Nickel Project, has an estimated capital cost of $3.1 billion but its potential output of nickel and cobalt could lead to capital cost payback in 3.1 years.

Three factors make Goongarrie an interesting project. There is the sudden appearance of three big Japanese companies prepared to work with Ardea on a fresh feasibility study. Their participation is driven by demand for battery-grade MHP nickel, with the final point being that if a third HPAL project is built in WA others are likely to follow as interest returns to almost forgotten deposits of low-grade nickel ore which is the feedstock of an HPAL plant.

Small Explorers

Other small exploration companies with a potentially deposits of low-grade nickel suitable to HPAL processing include:

Nico Resources (ASX: NC1) which owns the Wingellina nickel deposit near the border with WA and South Australia. Wingellina is one of Australia’s original nickel discoveries with first reports filed in the 1950s by Canada’s one-time nickel giant Inco."

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Has anyone here been following these events and could chime in with thoughts as to whether this could be something that Nico is currently working towards?