JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Aim- and AltX-listed exploration junior African Eagle Resources was considering a listing on the TSX in Toronto, its chairperson Euan Worthington told Mining Weekly Online on Tuesday.

"We're looking at various options and some have suggested that listing in Toronto would be a good way forward, so that's one of the options on the cards," Worthington elaborated to Mining Weekly Online in a video interview.

African Eagle has a nickel development project at prefeasibility stage at Dutwa in Tanzania, which it hopes to turn to account with a majority partner.

It will take $400-million to develop Dutwa and African Eagle envisages that $160-million of that will be equity. "We'll be able to finance our share. We'll have to turn to the equity capital markets at some stage in the coming years, but at the moment we have £3-million in the bank and we don't see any need for further financing till the end of the year," Worthington told Mining Weekly Online.

Amomg African Eagle's main shareholders are JP Morgan Asset Management in London and TWP in South Africa, with Phelps Dodge/Freeport still in with a small stake acquired in a joint venture (JV) in Zambia.

The company's planned disposal of copper assets in Zambia and gold projects in Tanzania might also contribute towards future capital.

There are suitors for the company's Miyabi gold project in Tanzania and the Igurubi gold project, also in Tanzania, has already been joint ventured.

It is envisaged that 2011 will be African Eagle's fundraising year and that construction of the proposed laterite nickel mine at Dutwa will begin in 2012, with production by the end of 2013.

African Eagle expects to be able to produce nickel at $2,50/lb. On Tuesday, nickel was trading at $8,50/lb.

"We're comfortable that it's a very low-cost project. We believe that it stacks up very well on economic grounds. You won't need too many explosives. A lot of it can be stripped out and ripped out," Worthington told Mining Weekly Online.

When African Eagle took out the Dutwa licence two years ago, it was searching for gold, but its geologists ended up discovering nickel.

Wamangola Hill at Dutwa has since been found to contain 31,1-million Joint Ore Reserve Committee-compliant tons of ore at 1,1% nickel and 0,034% cobalt.

Drilling 5 km away at the Nagasamo in JV with Safina of Czech is expected to add from another 10-million tons to 15-million tons of nickel and 70 km away is also the far larger Zanzui nickel prospect, giving rise to the possibility of the area being a nickel laterite district.

Minproc of Australia, which did the scoping study, chose two processing routes from 12- atmospheric heap leach or atmospheric tank leach.

However, both require the use of sulphuric acid, which could mean having to transport sulphur over long distances from either Dar-es-Salaam or Mombasa. Preliminary studies show the railway system to be inadequate and barging on Lake Victoria also problematic.

"We're looking very closely at the transport issue," Worthington told Mining Weekly Online.

African Eagle has recruited a highly rated nickel laterite matallurgist to deal with the metallurgy.

"Western Australia's projects have given laterites a bad name because they were all based on expensive high-pressure acid-leach technology and which is difficult to manage.

"Dutwa is not big enough to withstand high-pressure acid leach and I think you are going to see fewer projects using high-pressure acid leach, because it is unnecessary. If heap leach works, which is straight forward like gold heap leaching, why not follow that route? It's the cleanest, because even tanking has its problems as tanks that hold sulphuric acid can corrode," Worthington said, who added that the Dutwa orebody was high in quartz and low in magnesium, iron and clay, which made it ideal for leaching.

Tests have shown an 88% recovery after 50 days, a fraction of the recovery rate of several other comparable projects.

Worthington commented to Mining Weekly Online that although the nickel price was likely to soften this year, the longer-term outlook for the metal remained "very good".