wingellina nickel ore contains 50pc iron ore , page-5

Can I add a bit? There are a lot of people worried by nickel laterite, due to the troubles at Murrin Murrin in WA for a good while. Ive done some internet searching, as anyone can do and it wont take you long to get some good info.
About 40% and rising of all nickel produced globally now comes from laterite ore. The worlds biggest laterite nickel mine is BHP's Mt Keith in WA, producing 117,000 tpa nickel which is 16% of world laterite production. The big new mine going in in New Caledonia is also laterite from memory.
Murrin Murrin in WA is a large laterite mine also but with a higher level of impurities than Wingellina, manganese and aluminium- which require a high amount of sulphuric acid to emiminate. Sulphuric acid is very corrosive and M M plant was not built initially to cope with the levels they ended up having to use. Their costs were around $8.50 lb last year. Tests on W ore show it has a low level of these impurities so the acid can be a lot less concentrated than at Murrin Murrin. Again, quickly it has about 1/6th of the level? The management were quite chuffed about this and have reported it in past reports.
Laterite is commonly cheaper to mine than sulphide ore because it tends to occur on the surface. W has very low overburden. Low waste to strip ratio.
But something else is a home run. It is rich in cobalt. Cobalt is hot, hot, hot, at the moment and is selling for $50,000 a ton or so. This is a component in the Nicad and N hydride batteries. A Toyota Prius uses 2.5 kilos in its batteries. Bigger hybrid cars will use more as do the most advanced batteries. Total world production is only 65,000 tons a year. It is also in laptop and mobile phone batteries. Run the mental calculator over that.
I dont think Australia needs the Chinese to show us how to treat laterite. Weve been doing it for a long time now, but we should always be open to better ways of doing anything if available. Laterite is where the main component of new nickel is going to come from. Wingellina together with the new area to the north being drilled is moving towards one of the worlds largest nickel deposits in the top dozen or so together. With startup production at 40,000tpa nickel at about $30k a ton thats $1.2billion pa before cobalt credits. With W costs estimated about $4 a lb after cobalt credits and sale prices at $13 lb, net profit before overheads and taxes around $800 million pa, without the new ore, and a plant cost of $1.7 billion, things look interesting.
Then there is infrasructure. Electricity can be generated by solar plant out these in the hottest part of Australia. There is artesian water in the region. They estimate a lot of water can be recycled by the plant. Sulphur for the acid could come from Compass in the NT who will produce 136,000tpa as a byproduct at its Sulphides deposit in a few years. It could be hauled a lot of the way on the Ghan. Not very bulky.
Nickel and cobalt are high value low bulk. We'e not talking iron ore here. However if a rail link was put out there the iron sands may find a ready market in local steelmakers. The deposit is a clay so opencut mining is easy. Ten semis a day should do it for the nickel cobalt concentrate. Each would carry 0.5 to $1.0 million dollars worth. Tin v. good, US $24,000ton. Nickel better $30,000 ton, cobalt best $50,000 ton. There is blacktop out to the Olgas 150k to the NE. Not sure what the terrain is like in between. Google earth.