Name: Ravensthorpe mine.

Location: The mine is located within the shire of Ravensthorpe, Western Australia, about 550 km south-east of Perth.

Controlling Company: First Quantum Minerals.

Brief History: The Ravensthorpe operation was sold by BHP Billiton to First Quantum in December 2009, owing to reduced profitability prospects, the decreasing scope of the nickel market and a gap between projected capital expenditure and production volumes.

The mine was acquired as a decommissioned nickel operation in February 2010. During the following 18 months, First Quantum made significant modifications to the processing plant, focusing mainly on the redesign of the crushing, conveying, storage, reclaim and rejects areas. The mine achieved commercial production on December 28, 2011.

Brief Description: Ravensthorpe is an opencut mine and hydrometallurgical process plant that uses proven technology to recover nickel and cobalt to produce a mixed nickel cobalt hydroxide inter- mediate product. The project’s three deposits – Halleys, Hale-Bopp and Shoemaker-Levy – are estimated to contain sufficient reserves and resources to support a mine life of more than 30 years.

Mining Method: Openpit

Products: Nickel and cobalt.

Major Infrastructure and Equipment: Operations at Ravensthorpe involve openpit mining and the beneficiation of nickel laterite ore, pressure acid leaching, atmospheric leaching, countercurrent decantation, precipitation and filtration to produce a mixed hydroxide precipitate product.

Sulphuric acid for the leaching process is produced on site in a 4 400 t/d sulphur burning, double-absorption acid plant, with waste heat being recovered to produce steam through three 18 MW steam turbines for the generation of power and provision of heat for the leaching process.

Geology/Mineralisation: The Ravensthorpe region is underlain by basement rocks of the Albany-Fraser Orogen and the Yilgarn Craton, which constitute the bulk of the Western Australian land mass. These rocks consist of granite, gneiss and minor enclaves of sedimentary and volcanic rocks. At Bandalup Hill, lateritic nickel deposits up to 80 m thick are developed over ultramafic rocks.

Mineralisation occurs in limonite (high iron, low magnesium and calcium upper levels) and saprolite (low iron, high magnesium, deeper levels) ores in the three deposits – Halleys, Hale-Bopp and Shoemaker-Levy.

Resources: Total measured and indicated resources as at December 31, 2012, were 260.7-million tonnes at 0.63% nickel, 0.03% cobalt, 11.7% iron, 1.5% aluminium, 6.1% magnesium, 01.3% calcium, 12.3% carbon trioxide, 30 parts per million (ppm) copper and 80 ppm zinc.

Total inferred resources were 114.1million tonnes at 0.53% nickel, 0.02% cobalt, 10.1% iron, 1.802% aluminium, 8.6% magnesium, 0.7% calcium, 8.5% carbon trioxide, 39 ppm copper and 74 ppm zinc.

Prospects: Ravensthorpe’s average yearly nickel production is expected to be about 36 000 t for the next five years, with an average production of 28 000 t/y.

Contact Person: Director of investor relations Sharon Loung.

Contact Details:
First Quantum Minerals,
tel +1 647 346 3934, fax +1 604 688 3818,
email sharon.loung@fqml.com, and
website http://www.first-quantum.com.