Mining Magazine > Panorama > Western Areas buys BioHeap

Australian nickel miner Western Areas has executed a Heads of Agreement to acquire BioHeap sulphide leaching technology from Pacific Ore Ltd. The agreement provides Western Areas with an option period of up to six months to conduct due diligence on the BioHeap process, assess the global patents and licenses and conduct test work on a range of low grade sulphide ores from the Forrestania nickel project.

BioHeap is a bacterial heap leaching technology developed to leach low grade sulphide ores to produce intermediate products which can be sold directly to nickel refineries. A large amount of test work has been carried out on a range of nickel and copper deposits and the technology has been successfully applied at the Radio Hill nickel mine.

Western Areas managing director, Julian Hanna said: "BioHeap has the potential to unlock significant value from the large volume of low grade mineralisation adjacent to our existing and planned mines at Forrestania, at relatively low cost. BioHeap also provides the opportunity to increase production from the Cosmic Boy concentrator above currently announced targets of between 20,000t of nickel in 2010 and 35,000t of nickel in 2012."

"Our intention is to use the existing, highly skilled BioHeap staff to conduct the test work so this does not detract in any way from our current operations at Forrestania," added Mr Hanna.