Speaking at IMARC in Melbourne yesterday, Harold said he was pleased to see the nickel price recover to more than $US11,000 per tonne in recent weeks.

Panoramic suspended its Savannah and Lanfranchi nickel operations earlier this year as nickel prices plunged to 13-year lows of around $7500/t.

“I don’t think it’s going to be long before we think about having a board meeting about turning those assets back on,” Harold said.

He said Savannah could be restarted very quickly.

“Probably about three months from the time we push the button to first ore on ship,” he said.

But Harold said Panoramic was still waiting for nickel to hit the “right price”.

He said the company was only a week or so away from releasing the feasibility study for the Savannah North deposit.

“I think everybody is going to be incredibly surprised by some of the numbers we put out,” Harold said.

The Savannah North development was an exciting prospect for the company, he said.

The combined Savannah and Savannah North deposits have a combined resource of 275,000 tonnes of nickel, against the resource of 330,000t nickel at Independence Group’s Nova-Bollinger deposit.

“We think we’ll quickly go ahead of Nova-Bollinger and become the biggest nickel sulphide deposit in Western Australia,” Harold said.

At the same time, Panoramic is progressing the $15 million spin-off of its gold assets through IPO Horizon Gold.

Panoramic shares fell by 3.7% yesterday to A27c.