Page 25 - pd287-Oct20-mag-web_Neat

been consistent performers.
“It is still a key operation with good
cash coming out of it so it is important we
keep it going as long as we can,” Lougher
said.
The FY2020 results highlighted why
Lougher is so keen to keep the For-
restania operations ticking along.
The company posted its highest profit
in seven years in the period, with net
profit after tax up 125% to $31.9 million
and EBITDA increased to $121.9 million.
The cash generation came off the back
of 20,926t of nickel-in-concentrate pro-
duced over the 12-month period.
“Flying Fox is getting a bit long in the
tooth, but it is still producing good nickel,
we just have to work a bit harder to push
the mine life beyond two years,” he said.
“At Spotted Quoll we are doing some
work with HiSeis to target new orebod-
ies, then at New Morning we have the
potential for another small underground
mine in the next few years.”
Away from the drill bit, the company is
intent on deploying its patented BioHeap
processing technology to extract a high-
grade nickel product out of mill scats.
Lougher believes the project – sched-
uled to start construction by Christmas –
could provide a pathway to treatment of
lower-grade nickel deposits well into the
future at Forrestania. to increase its market share. The battery demand dynamics, leading to the crea-
“Once it is established, it opens up a market currently uses around 8% of glob- tion of the Chinese nickel pig iron indus-
number of other targets in that region,” al nickel production but this is predicted try. Since establishing itself in the early
he said. to rise to as much as 25% by 2035 as EV 2010s, NPI has fed the Chinese stain-
Outside its home state, Western Ar- penetration increases. less steel market with cheap nickel, pro-
eas is finding early exploration success The demand side of the equation is duced from laterite deposits in Indone-
on its Western Gawler project in South more complicated. Nickel’s price spike sia, Philippines and New Caledonia. Its
Australia. to $US50,000/t in 2007 disrupted supply/ emergence placed a ceiling on the nickel
“We moved into the area six years
ago because we thought, like a lot of
Australia, it was being ignored because
it was under cover,” Lougher said. “We
took a punt and it has been six years in
the making. The JV with Iluka Resources
[Ltd] has allowed us to zoom in on an
area we like. There is still a lot of work to
do and the plan is to next do some more
geophysics to better delineate further
targets. It is early days but the quality of
the drill results to date are very positive
for future exploration.”
Driving Western Areas’ enthusiasm
for nickel is the bullish predictions of de-
mand growth through the 2020s. Since
before the discovery of the Kambalda
nickel camp in the late 1960s, the base
metal’s prospects have been pinned to
the stainless steel sector – first in the US
and Europe, then Korea and Japan and
latterly China.
While stainless steel remains the
dominant user of nickel (more than 70%
in 2019) the lithium-ion battery sector,
particularly for EV batteries, continues

aUSTRaLIa’S PaYDIRT OCTOBeR 2020 Page 25