Nickel miner Western Areas is getting closer to marketing a unique bacterial leaching project that will improve its profits by enhancing the grade of concentrate it can produce.
Western Areas metallurgy manager Craig Fitzmaurice said the mill recovery enhancement project had the potential to gain extra nickel ore normally lost in tailings that when added to its concentrator would produce a higher grade.
It is believed the project has the potential to increase Western Areas current 14 per cent grade nickel product by about 1 per cent.
This will have a direct positive impact on Western Areas profit, although Mr Fitzmaurice said it was too early to estimate increased earnings.
Western Areas is also preparing to strike commercial agreements with nickel and copper miners, including from overseas, which would pay Western Areas to help them increase the amount of sulphides they can extract.
Mr Fitzmaurice said controlling the technology would provide Western Areas with a significant boost and set it apart within the industry.
“There are competing technologies out there in the world and we’re up against them. We believe we have a more robust one. Ours has been targeted to work out in the field, a lot of them are very laboratory based,” he said.
Western Areas acquired the BioHeap technology after working with its then owner Pacific Ore to test it out on Western Areas’ emerging Finnish nickel mining projects.
Mr Fitzmaurice said when Pacific Ore ran out of money during the GFC, Western Areas bought it cheaply and had since further developed the bacterial leaching technology.
BioHeap uses unique bacteria to break down sulphides that typically won’t leach well in acid, enabling the extraction of valuable sulphides.
Mr Fitzmaurice said if Western Areas did not have an interest in Finland it may have never considered bacterial leaching and the technology could have been lost.
“The synergy at the time was right ... if we hadn’t have had the (Finland operation) perhaps it may not have worked. It probably would have been a technology that died and who knows,” he said.
Managing director Dan Lougher said he hoped to have the project approved by the board early next year.
