Titan said today it had "exchanged letters" with WMC Resources regarding the "possible application of the Titan BioHeap nickel recovery process to WMC's currently sub-economic nickel resources at its various operations in WA".
WMC's involvement is the strongest sign yet that Titan's novel bacterial treatment process for low-grade nickel sulphide ores may be a winner.
The process is also attracting attention further afield, with confirmation talks underway with an "international mining house".
Titan managing director Bill Ryan declined to reveal the identity of the company, but described it as a "major international nickel producer with an Australian base".
Titan started BioHeap trials earlier this year on low-grade ore at its Radio Hill mine in Western Australia, and the process has exceeded expectations.
"It is actually working two-and-a-half times faster than we thought it would," Ryan said.
The encouraging signs have piqued the interest of WMC, which is already familiar with Titan via its offtake agreement for Radio Hill nickel concentrates.
"They [WMC] have massive quantities of sub-1% material all around the country, and they see this as a way of possibly exploiting it," Ryan said. "We're offering a cheap capital, cheap operating cost route to get nickel out."
Ryan will review WMC's data on these resources early next week, but it seems Leinster will be the first cab off the rank.
"I need to see the data, but their suggestion is to start on Leinster," he said. "There is something in the order of 150-200 million tonnes of lower grade material there, as a mineralised halo around the massive sulphide orebody. The grade is probably better than 0.5%, but what the strip ratio is I don't know yet."
Joint venture details can’t be finalised until Titan has viewed WMC's numbers.
"But our aim would be to get a significant minority equity in the operation," Ryan said.
At this stage, the concept is to start field trials at Leinster in the early part of 2001.
"The first thing we'd do is some lab work for three or four months to optimise the conditions, etc," Ryan said. "You actually modify the bugs to best suit the individual orebody. And then we'd do some column tests in the lab to get the conditions right."
As of last Friday, BioHeap nickel recoveries at Radio Hill had risen to 55%, improving from 32% on July 24. Titan said recovery into solution was rising at 5% per week towards a target level of 70%.
"We didn’t expect to be at our target until Christmas," Ryan said. "But at the current rate we'll get there some time next month. Maybe it will slow down. We always expected it would, but so far it hasn’t.
Titan has spent just under $4 million on the trial so far, including $3 million of its own money and $880,000 from an AusIndustry Research and Development Assistance Grant. The budget for this fiscal year is also around $4 million.
The aim is to eventually mount a 1Mt a year operation that will deliver approximately 4000t of nickel per year - roughly the same amount as Titan currently produces from conventional treatment of the declining Radio Hill orebody.
Meanwhile, Titan intends to "rev up" exploration around Radio Hill with a $500,000 aeromagnetic survey over its entire lease starting next month, followed by drilling programs next year.
"We aim to spend around $3 million in the next couple of years," Ryan said. "The target will be massive sulphides, but the hope is we'll also pick up some disseminated stuff for our heap leaching as well."
