The thing about base metals is no matter what the amateurs say it is evident demand WILL grow to feed not just the BUILD part of the SEA countries, but the ongoing CONSUMPTION of these metals. we are talking about a 5 fold increase in consumption. this was NOT around in the 70's and 80's when the smelters were king.. where they and their outrageous chargebacks were the chokepoint on ore. But are they now? The fact is 8 majors would not be racing to develop leach technologies for sulfide bodies if the smelters still had sway. But they are off base too. (I can tell you that exorthermic processes are NOT dead, however.)
Sure you can leach IF you can find a way to do it, without excessive costs. Passivation is the key sticking point. Sulfides resist total acid attack. But there are ways around that and many are after that brass ring. In fact ammoniacal methods can be used to attack metals and ready made electrolytic metals can be churned out the back end of a medium sized sulfide mine for a lot less than the smelters of old. With today's metal prices it starts to make a lot more sense to make centralized facility, IF one could get a hold of few mines with perhaps north of 180 dollars a ton contained metals. The key here is diabolical. You need extraction technology/manpower that is cheap enough to support these ordinary sulfide ores, AND then concentration and shipping to a central leach plant. This is not out of the realm of doability.. many many opportunities exist.. the difference is the processes available today to bypass the conventional smelters.. and the metals prices.. this makes, with the fragmentation of metals markets the base metals now within the profitable reach of small to medium scale enterprise.. It is a science, tech, market equation that means that base metals are NOT the big boys game they used to be. The market price of metals tells you that.
The whole game has changed.. AND the SEA countries whilst not happy with market if they collapse are NOT tied to the liquidity problems that may beset the NA markets. Their money for development is only partially tied to markets. They have followed a more classical develop, make money, build and expand process, so they alone have the cash to develop mines. We have painted ourselves in a corners, denying to governments and our shareholders that we can meet their excessive pollution control regs, perhaps because we just were not aware of the existing science, or willing to pay for it, and overtaxing and over organizing our industry. SEA countries do not have that problem. Xstrata is Brazilian. Much of the CDN base metal industry is owned by South Americans now.
It is tragic we did not see how to do it. How to keep it going, keep the manpower and engineering equation going.. we sold our heritage for a mess of pottage and now are getting dragged down by an easy money mess that was a sad answer to our inability to produce and progress, train and technologize, sell and grow.. We have built paper empires of scam, and let our children become wastrels. Our gods have been false and we will pay the price.
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