Australia's junior explorers - The ASIA Miner

Indonesia
Sorowako nickel furnaces back on line
INDONESIAN publicly-listed mining company
PT Vale, formerly PT Inter national Nickel Indonesia,
has restarted two furnaces damaged
during an incident at its Sorowako Nickel
Project in South Sulawesi in 2011. The repair
and upgrades of the two fur naces were necessary
due to the incident which involved a
group of people claiming to represent the interests
of local residents.
The angry protesters captured Vale workers,
blocked strategic roads in the city and
called for compensation for the loss of agricultural
land they claimed was flooded during
the power plant’s construction. It is not
clear how the furnaces were damaged during
the incident.
The company says it used the situation to
bring forward planned maintenance on the
28 | ASIA Miner | July/August 2012
furnaces by 12 months, and perform upgrades
on the equipment. This r esulted in an
11% reduction in production of nickel matte.
“We turned the power on for furnace number
2 in April and this fur nace is now in full pr oduction
with 20% higher capacity,” finance director
Fabio Bechara said.
The company finally reached a settlement
with local residents in February and is for ecast
to produce about 72,000 tonnes of nikkel
matte this calendar year , down fr om
2010’s high of 76,000 tonnes but higher than
the 66.9 million tonnes produced in 2011.
“We are still on track for what we have
planned, although the r esult of the first
quarter was low. Because we concentrated
all the shutdowns in the first quarter , we
hope that we will r ecover and our produc-
Martabe production start is imminent
PROGRESS at G-Resources’ Martabe goldsilver
project is tracking well, with several major
milestones reached in preparation for first gold
The location of prospects and deposits at G-Resources
Martabe project in North Sumatra.
production to begin in July. It hosts a resource
base of 7.86 million ounces of gold and 73.48
million ounces of silver with production to start
at an annual rate 250,000 ounces of gold and
2-3 million ounces of silver.
The tailings storage facility wall is complete
and ready for project start up after wet weather
caused delays in April, a permanent
power supply has been connected to the
processing plant and a temporary power facility
has been installed and commissioned.
Conveyors and belting have been installed,
water commissioning in the pr ocessing plant
has commenced and the SAG and ball or e
grinding mills ar e technically complete. An
assay laboratory is also functioning and already
providing analysis of grade contr ol samples
and will be analysing pr ocess plant samples
once commissioning on ore commences.
The flagship $678 million Martabe project is
on the western side of Sumatra in the Batangtoru
sub-district of North Sumatra province. A
contract of works (COW) for the 1639sqkm
project was signed between G-Resources and
the Indonesian gover nment in 1997. G-Resources’
chief executive of ficer Peter Albert
says Martabe is set to become the core asset
on which the company will base a globally
competitive Asia-Pacific focused gold business.
“G-Resources is seeking to gr ow gold
production to more than one million ounces
annually through exploration success on the
large and highly prospective COW area.”
Of the total capital spend of $678 million,
tion will return to predicted levels,” said Vale
president Nicolaas Kanter.
PT Vale is 58.73% owned by V ale Canada,
20.09% by Sumitomo Metal Mining
and 21.18% by the public.
The company is allocating $150 million for
capital expenditures this year to support studies
for development plans. V ale hopes to
ramp up production capacity to 120,000 tonnes
of nickel matte by 2017, or almost 10%
of the world’s nickel supply. However, the
company needs about $2 billion to support
capacity upgrades in order to reach its production
goals in coming years. Fabio Bechara
says the company has allocated US$150 million
for capital expenditure during 2012.
Vale’s current production accounts for
about 5% of global nickel supply.
$542 million was incurred by late May with a
further $136 million to be spent prior to pr oduction
in July and a further $21 million falling
into the post-production period.
A 24-hour mining operation is already under
way and has stockpiled 150,000 tonnes of
ore ready for the start-up of processing operations.
Training and r ecruitment of employees
at the pr ocessing operations and
within the maintenance team is continuing in
readiness for the first production.
Drilling activities are also continuing at the
project’s Tor Uluala North and Horas Barat
deposits. The company is preparing for initial
drill holes at Tani Hill to confirm a potential buried
porphyry system and at Golf Mike targeting
near surface gold mineralization which
outcrops as a 600 metre x 1200 metre zone
of advanced alteration with surface rock samples
returning up to 12.2 grams/tonne gold.
Best recent results from a target west of the
Horas deposit include 25 metr es @ 2.3
grams/tonne gold and 2 grams/tonne silver
and 25.8 metres @ 1.31 grams/tonne gold
and 1 gram/tonne silver.
At the Gambi Kapur target south of Golf
Mike, 14 diamond drill holes have been completed
with best results including 31 metres
@ 2.3 grams/tonne gold and 6.4 metr es @
1.2 grams/tonne gold.