The prejudice there is location, location, location.. despite the Falco mill, and because of the Falco/Xstrata mill, anyone going in there will wonder why "falco" does not buy it, offtake their feed. Falco will not build a mill for them, and what do they do with their concentrates? Ship them. So is it profitable to ship to the Falco mill? And any feed Knight has displaces the Falco feed, so... does it make sense without adding additional circuitry? No, not really.
Falco thought about that 3% Ni for 32 years (It was first drilled in 1968) before making at tippie-toe into the area once Voisey's Bay was found. It was prejudice. As long as Inco controlled Nickel, Falco could not go way up there with the higher costs and the refusal of the CDN government to accelerate tax deductions for infrastructure building in the far north. Au contraire the feds asked that ALL buildings had to be removable. NO more leaving the headframe and mill once you are done. No foundations. This meant That Falco had to find a LOT more ore, AND a good nickel price in order to be able to do it.. So when they had drilled it off to a few hundred feet, taken their pencil out and calced it to 1200' deep, then they knew they had enough ore that the closure was off in never never land.. and they could go ahead.. and plus they had a free nickel price, no longer controlled by Inco, edging up to 8 bucks.. and Inco was on a Hiatus.. seeking desperately to make the Voisey work AND keep their smelters in Sudbury, (a 2 billion dollar, 100 year investment with a workforce and city... near tide water..).., intact.. the Inco smelters in Sudbury got the boot from Newfoundland.. and the Raglan was built.. Falco kept THEIR smelters.. as they did not have Newfoundland problem.. and their process was Sheritt.. so did not need the oxygen etc of the Inco process..
People do not realize what the new freely available ammonia technology in nickel refining really means. They have never caught on. They do not realize what the free non-Inco-controlled price means either. They do not get it. What it means is anyone with a nickel orebody is a potential world class producer.. They no longer need the big boys.. Sherrit, who went out of the nickel business because their ore was far away and Inco was always trashing the price of Nickel, have returned with a vengeance.. now it makes sense to make nickel. It is very high cost. It needs the prices you see today. A return like this is not trivial. The Sherrit shark will be out feeding. Get your nickel engines started gentelmen.
"The multi-faceted Sherritt Gordon empire owes its life to the thin line of steel which now connects with civilization. Only the railroad can provide low-cost year-round transportation."
lynnlake.ca
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