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NICKel CoNFeReNCe PReVIeW

Sinclair sidelined as Lachlan takes

centre stage

inclair remains on the backburner at Kerry Harmanis-backed company is look- some deeper drilling.
STalisman Mining Ltd, but that could all ing to sell and focus solely on NSW. “Right now, Sinclair is competing dol-
change with a sharp uptick in the nickel Madden said the company remained lar-for-dollar against NSW. To put it in
price. open to all options, but the nickel price context, for a greenfield opportunity at
Talisman managing director Dan Mad- would ultimately have the final say on Sin- Sinclair, you’re looking at aircore drilling
den said low-cost exploration success clair’s future. to try and identify the ultramafic, which is
across a suite of greenfield targets in New “We’ve got very, very good optional- then followed up by deeper drilling, which
South Wales had conspired with unpre- ity with Sinclair; it has the vast majority of is more expensive and a longer process.
dictable nickel price movements to justify infrastructure in place, including the pro- That’s why we now have a stronger focus
a reduced spend at Sinclair, about 80km cessing plant, and it does have approxi- in NSW. If the nickel price moves and the
north-west of Leonora. mately four years of mineralisation in terms stock price moves to reflect that, we’ll take
Sinclair has been on care-and-main- of the resource and exploration target put a view at that time and go from there.”
tenance since August 2013. Talisman together,” Madden told Paydirt. Sinclair hosts a resource of 720,000t @
acquired the former Xstrata operation, in- “What dictates how much capital we put 2.3% nickel containing 16,200t, with an
cluding the 350,000 tpa concentrator, the into Sinclair is, of course, the nickel price. exploration target of 670,000-790,000t @
following year for $8 million plus a deferred We’re not there yet, but obviously the nick- 2-2.5% nickel containing 13,700-19,900t
$2 million payment contingent upon the re- el price is very quick moving, so getting a supporting that inventory.
start of production. view on the stability of the nickel price is Earlier this year drilling of multiple struc-
With Talisman seemingly no closer to re- important before we put capital into that tural, geophysical and geochemical tar-
suming operations than when it purchased type of opportunity, which would obviously gets identified a broad zone of oxide nickel
the asset, analysts have speculated the involve some restart costs and probably mineralisation over more than 500m at the

Talisman has flagged a reduced spend at Sinclair
until the nickel price dictates otherwise

Page 104 OCTOBeR 2019 aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT