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MINING SERVICES
Cadoux HPA project PFS 2018
Production: 8,000 tpa (capacity to expand)
Grade: 99.99% HPA (4N)
Funding requirement: $US197 million
C1 cost (average): $US6,467/t
Assumed selling price: $US24,000t
Annual average EBITDA: $US128 million
Free operating cash flow p.a.: $US91 million
NPV (10%): $506 million
IRR: 46%
Payback: 3.6 years
Ore reserve estimate: 2.8mt @ 24.4% aluminium oxide
Mine life: 25 years
it and this is no different.” to out manage any issues, get over them things to be miniaturised, so there are en-
FYI has worked closely with IMO to get very quickly and find a solution for a lot of gineering issues and then there are mate-
the pilot plant in order, with GR Engineering the things that do go wrong.” rial handling issues during the pilot plant
Ltd also involved on the process engineer- Given the ground-breaking trial under- stage. For example, material flowing along
ing and design. taken by both FYI and IMO, and the fact a pipeline where the diameter of a pipe is
“The original process was designed to that such a high-quality product is being quite large is not going to be restricted, but
take kaolin to aluminium metal form not to strived for, trial and error and R&D was es- if your pipeline is probably only a couple of
alumina, so in essence this is the first time sential in seeing the pilot plant hit its straps. millimetres [as in the pilot plant] it tends to
this has been piloted globally as an alumina “Even the slightest influences in the pro- cause some issues. It is a materials han-
product through such a process,” Hill said. cess can contaminate it and therefore we dling and equipment issue that you have to
“Having the key guys with the suitable ex- have to make sure that it is not off spec for get over and the team has done a great job
perience, qualifications and resilience has the desirable target quality that we want. in putting together the plant and we do feel it
been key to us, so IMO has been a comfort Any number of things can go wrong, but the is very representative of a commercial size
for us being there. It has been a very col- challenges have been obvious things that plant other than it being smaller.”
laborative process with them, a lot of trial you tend to overlook rather than things that
and error, but at every point the experience you’d expect,” Hill said. – Mark Andrews
has shone through and they’ve been able “Not many people miniaturise or make
Hpa process flowsheet
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