PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Junior Blackstone Minerals is looking for partners to feed its planned nickel refinery in Vietnam.
Speaking at the Australian Nickel conference, in Perth, Blackstone MD Scott Williamson said the company was hoping to source 50% of the feedstock for the proposed 40 000 t/y nickel refinery, with its own Ta Khoa nickel project, also in Vietnam, to provide the balance.
A 2011 prefeasibility study estimated that the refinery, which would upgrade nickel sulfide concentrate to a battery-grade nickel/cobalt/manganese (NCM) precursor, would require a capital investment of $491-million, with an after-tax net present value of $2.01-billion and an internal rate of return of 67%.
The refinery is expected to have an operating life of ten years, with life-of-operation all-in costs estimated at $11 997/t NCM 811.
A definitive feasibility study (DFS) for the refinery project is under way, Williamson said on Wednesday.
“The idea is that yeah, 50% of our feed will come from third-party feed, and that's where we're looking to also potentially bring in a partner into the downstream refinery. So the downstream partners will most likely come from either lithium-ion battery or car manufacturers. We are looking to sell down up to 50% of the project. And they will bring also some of that experience and capability to convert into that precursor chemical product, the NCM 811,” Williamson said.
“Those partners most likely will come from South Korea or Japan or China, some of the biggest players in the industry we've been talking to for many months now. They are waiting for that final DFS which is very close, and then we can look at a joint venture partnership. They will bring in a significant amount of capital, they'll de-risk the project and we will get the re-rate.”