Mirabela Nickel (MNB-T, MBN-A) has become the first Australian company to mine nickel in Brazil with the start of production at its 100%-owned Santa Rita open-cut nickel sulphide mine.
The deposit’s proven and probable open-pit mining reserves tally 121 million tonnes grading 0.6% nickel, making Santa Rita the largest nickel sulphide discovery worldwide in the last 12 years, the company says. Mirabela believes the mine will have a lifespan of about 19 years.
Initially Santa Rita will have a production capacity of 4.6 million tonnes per year. That will jump to 6.4 million tonnes per year in the second quarter of 2010.
News of production sent Mirabela up 6¢ or 2.3% to finish the day at $2.72 per share with 2.55 million shares trading hands. (The company has a 52-week trading range of 43¢-$4.97 with 282.24 million shares outstanding.)
Pre-stripping was completed in May and Mirabela stockpiled about 170,000 tonnes of run-of-mine ore. An additional 800,000 tonnes of ore was pre-stripped at a strip ratio of about 2:1.
The amount of stockpiled and pre-stripped ore is sufficient to commission the plant — which is expected to be completed in late September.
Construction of the 6.4 million tonne per year nickel sulphide concentrator got underway in November 2007 and is now over 90% complete. Operation is expected to start with a name plate capacity of 18,500 tonnes per year of nickel in concentrate increasing to 26,000 tonnes per year of nickel by mid-2010.
The start of mining operations at Santa Rita follows an oversubscribed private placement of A$117.5 million (US$97.2 million) to leading institutional investors in Australia, Europe and Canada on July 29.
The initial mining fleet consists of four, 100-tonne Caterpillar 777 trucks, two D9 tracked bulldozers, and a grader. The equipment will be used to mine a pre-blasted bench and prepare the pit for larger scale operations.
More equipment is on its way. A second delivery of larger capacity, 150-tonne Caterpillar 785 trucks, an additional two Caterpillar 777 trucks, Terex O&K RH90 and RH120 excavators is expected in September.
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