This may clear up the situation a bit ......response to my correspondence on behalf of Philip Wood, INL is not interested in entering into a public slanging match which can benefit nobody. That being said and for the record, I would like to clarify today’s JRV announcement on the following points:
INL acquired 14.56% of JRV (on a fully diluted basis) at an average cost of 1.16 cents per share. Based on an excessive JRV share price, INL subsequently sold a portion of these at an average of 2.73 cents per share, leaving INL still as JRV’s largest shareholder by far with 8.33% of JRV (on a fully diluted basis) at zero net cost to INL’s shareholders (allowing for the future exercise of 1c options). It is generally advisable for a company’s Board and Management to seek the best possible relations with its largest shareholder.
INL did not offer JRV the Intec Nickel Laterite Process technology for Young. Rather, it offered its technological expertise as the world leader in chloride hydrometallurgy, along with suitable local demonstration plant and testing facilities manned by expert personnel, by which the lengthy and expensive process of developing the promising Canadian technology owned by Bryn Harris could be hastened and its costs ameliorated.
Dr Harris is well known to Intec as a respected chloride hydrometallurgy researcher, and Intec has been working separately with Dr Harris on a range of chloride hydrometallurgical projects that are quite separate and distinct from his work with JRV, although Intec is well aware of this also.
The Board and Management of JRV, by contrast, are not expert in the field of hydrometallurgy, and are not in a position to make informed judgements related to the Intec Process (or any other hydrometallurgical) technology.
The technology being developed by Dr Harris shows promise as a chloride hydrometallurgy application to extract nickel from nickel laterites. Intec is keen to see not only its own technologies but also other hydrometallurgical processes (such as Dr Harris’s) be successfully commercialised across the full range of base and precious metals applications. Each successful application of hydrometallurgy to a complex or unusual resource improves market sentiment towards alternatives to conventional smelting.
That being said, while Dr Harris’s technology shows promise, it continues to require substantial development through a number of progressively increasing plant size stages before it can be applied at the commercial scale. At this stage, all of the testing has been only at the laboratory scale, in batch rather than continuous testing.
Additionally, Mr Pursell has previously published an estimated cost for the development, engineering, construction and operation of a pilot plant at Young as being A$12-15m. The cost estimate appears to be a considerable underestimate at the 20,000-50,000tpa scale that Mr Pursell indicated in today’s announcement. Intec has the experience to be confident that its Burnie demonstration plant would be suitable for the purpose at a tiny fraction of the real alternate cost.
At no point did Intec offer any portion of the Hellyer assets to JRV.
Mr Pursell should be able to differentiate between the existing cash-generating operations at Hellyer, using conventional grinding and flotation in the refurbished existing mill to produce a bulk zinc concentrate (recovering zinc, lead and silver); and Intec’s patented hydrometallurgical process, which will in 2008 be commercialised via the construction of the Intec Hellyer Residues Project, also on the site at Hellyer.
The Intec Zinc Process will be applied to a combined feedstock consisting of Intec’s Electric Arc Furnace Dust stockpile, its Zeehan Residue stockpile, and other third party EAFD and metalliferous residue materials. The zinc and other valuable metals will be extracted, leaving a stable iron oxide residue for disposal to the existing tailings dam.
The Intec Process is fully capable of extracting high levels of precious metals alongside base metals, with the products related to the primary target metal or metals. Each application of the Intec Process technology – the Intec Zinc Process, Intec Gold Process, Intec Copper Process, Intec Nickel Process or the Intec Polymetallic Process – yields a primary metal product related to the highest-value component of the feedstock(s), as well as saleable by-products containing the minor metals also present in the feedstock(s).
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