Poseidon advances Black Swan buy

18th December 2014 By: Esmarie Iannucci - Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor: Australasia

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Nickel miner Poseidon Nickel on Thursday extended the expected completion date of the Black Swan operation, from the end of this calendar year until March next year.

However, MD and CEO David Singleton said that the extension to the completion deadline would not change Poseidon’s overall schedule to restart the Black Swan operation.

In July this year, the ASX-listed Poseidon struck a deal with Russian major Norilsk Nickel to buy the Black Swan nickel operation.

Singleton noted on Thursday that since the acquisition agreement, the two companies have worked to satisfy the conditions precedent to facilitate the completion of the sale.

These conditions included a number of government and environmental approvals associated with the site being on care-and-maintenance, as well as to facilitate the restart of mining operations.

These approvals have now been received, and both Poseidon and Norilsk were now working through the transfer of a number of covenants attaching to the tenements associated with historical undertakings.

“We have made very good progress at Black Swan,” Singleton said.

Poseidon had initially planned to use the 2.2-million-tonne Black Swan processing plant to treat the ore from its Windarra operation, but following a deal with major BHP Billiton earlier this year, the Windarra ore would now be treated at BHP’s Nickel West division, leaving Black Swan to be developed as a standalone operation.

A current feasibility study on the Black Swan project was based on a 1.1-million-tonne-a-year operation, based on a resource of 30.7-million tonnes, grading 0.58% nickel for 179 000 t of contained nickel.

The Black Swan operation was scheduled to go into production as soon as the Mt Windarra and Lake Johnston projects were in production.