TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Marine-mining pioneer Nautilus Minerals on Monday announced that the Solwara 1 Joint Venture (comprising Nautilus 85% and Eda Kopa (Solwara) Limited 15%) has taken delivery of the three seafloor production tools (SPTs) from British manufacturer Soil Machine Dynamics’ (SMD) facility, in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Nautilus advised that the three SPTs were now en route to Oman, where they were scheduled to undergo extensive wet testing at Duqm Port.
Nautilus planned to use the SPTs to cut and extract high-grade copper and gold from the seafloor at the Solwara 1 project site in the Bismarck Sea, offshore Papua New Guinea, with seafloor production operations planned to start early in 2018.