Aussie nickel deposit now under development

The Murrin Murrin nickel and cobalt deposit in Western Australia is under development and scheduled to be commissioned in the fourth quarter of 1998.

Development will be carried out in two stages. At the end of the first stage, the mining and extraction complex will have an annual capacity of 40,000 tons of nickel and 3,500 tons of cobalt. The second stage will raise the annual capacity of the operation to 75,000 tons of nickel and 4,500 tons of cobalt.

Development work began in May of this year. The limonitic, laterite deposit is situated 55 km east of Lenora and 65 km southwest of Laverton, near Lake Carey. At last report, the deposit had at least 128 million tons of low-magnesium resources averaging 1% nickel and 0.064% cobalt.

The project is a joint venture, with ownership split 60-40 between Anaconda Nickel and Glenmore International of Switzerland. The construction of an open-pit mine and pressure acid-leach plant is expected to cost US$655 million.

Fluor Daniel Australia is responsible for the overall design and engineering. Sherritt International is supplying the technology for hydrometallurgically extracting the nickel and cobalt from the laterite. An aboriginal-owned contract mining company is clearing the site and building roads.