PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Embattled nickel miner Poseidon Nickel is considering a standalone gold facility at its Windarra project, in Western Australia, while nickel prices remain in the doldrums.
Poseidon previously placed all of its projects on care and maintenance as a result of the historically low nickel prices and the company was hoping to minimise costs where possible, while maintaining the option to restart both its Lake Johnston and Silver Swan operations rapidly when a more favourable price point was reached.
Poseidon said it was now considering a gold reprocessing facility at Windarra, which was likely to be viable, based on extensive work carried out to date.
With the acquisition of the Black Swan project earlier this year, the company decided to process ore from the proposed Windarra nickel mine at the Black Swan processing plant, with the nickel processing plant at Windarra no longer required.
Meanwhile, Poseidon was also reviewing options to generate income from the Silver Swan mine to generate sufficient margin to allow the mine to meet the company’s ongoing operating costs.
Silver Swan was believed to be the world’s highest-grade nickel mine and Poseidon was convinced that careful selection of the correct mining approach to minimise costs, could make mining economic even at current nickel prices.
The high-grade nature of the ore meant that it could be directly shipped without the need for processing through a concentrator, which Poseidon said would significantly reduce restart capital costs and the development time for the project.
The company was now working towards a Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant statement for Silver Swan, as well as the development of a costed business plan for the restart of operations.
Further, offtake negotiations for nickel ore, rather than concentrate, were also under way, while funding options were being investigated to restart Silver Swan.