Poseidon Nickel plans to restart operations at its Black Swan project in Western Australia following a recent surge in nickel prices.
The Black Swan project is situated about 600km east of Perth and 50km northeast of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, and 300km south of Poseidon’s Windarra nickel project.
The company’s board approved an accelerated programme, which is estimated to cost $2.9m, ahead of a planned restart of the mine.
Works also include the rehabilitation of mine escape ladderways at the Silver Swan mine and the rehabilitation of all access ways and structures at the Black Swan facility, as well as dewatering the open pit.
Poseidon Nickel plans to complete the works in coming months for a quick restart.
The company said capital expenditure and rehabilitation work at the processing facility will run concurrently with metallurgical testing and optimal processing enhancements.
Poseidon Nickel Interim CEO David Riekie said: “We are now entering an important and critical time for Poseidon aided with tailwinds from improving, sustained increased nickel prices.
“Lower operating cost structure and ongoing cost savings together with optimisation processes have been our recent focus. These priorities have been designed to ensure that the largest portion of any benefit achieved with increasing nickel prices, translates to an improved overall stakeholder return.”
Poseidon purchased the Black Swan project from Norilsk Nickel Australia in late 2014. The project comprises the Silver Swan underground mine, the Black Swan open pit and the Black Swan 2.2Mtpa Concentrator with 191,400t of nickel metal in resource.
Poseidon Nickel owns three previously operating nickel sulphide mines, namely Windarra, Black Swan/Silver Swan and Lake Johnston. The 100% owned assets collectively had an operating capacity of 3.6mtpa.
The company has continued to explore at Lake Johnston, with recent diamond drilling at the Abi Rose prospect.