Radarz,Perhaps I am a little harsh on laterites.Laterites have...

Radarz,

Perhaps I am a little harsh on laterites.

Laterites have simply failed to fill the gap in the market they were promising to do. It's only their collective failure as such, which has created the gap and hence high prices, that have allowed even these high cost operations to profit.

Heap leach may yet be part of the solution, but not yet convinced they are cheap, how widely they can be applied etc.

Further if they succeed, it will take time to get substantial market penetration, and then it will be the higher cost prospective operations which would be likely to suffer first. In particular, could deter new high CAPEX laterite investments. This then opens the obvious possibility that heap leach doesn't materialise to the extent expected, once again leaving a gap in the market.

If threat of technology change were an immediate enough threat, then better to stick with those offering shortterm cash flows, and shorter investment life CAPEX such as the sulphide producers do. MRE is probably a reasonable investment (for a laterite operation) given my perspective on Ni, but I do see better, incl MCR.

EL