The aptly named Kalgoorlie Nickel Project (KNP) has been a subject of commentary at Paydirt’s Australian Nickel Conference for the best part of two decades, since previous operator Heron announced a JV agreement with Canadian major Inco back in 2005.
While the project was perhaps considered ambitious then, or more accurately ahead of its time, the current market dynamics might just prove to be exactly the right time for current developer Ardea Resources to bring it to fruition.
Speaking at Paydirt’s Australian Nickel Conference today, Ardea Resources managing director Andrew Penkethman said the KNP “mega-project”, containing 5.9 million tonnes of contained nickel, was the largest nickel-cobalt Resource in Australia and the largest in the developed world.
Andrew Penkethman, Ardea Resources managing director
“Deposits of this scale area a rarity … it’s all about the scale, it enables people to plan with decades in mind,” Mr Penkethman said.
“We see around the world, multiple companies investing billions of dollars building these gigafactories, but there hasn’t been as much thought put into where they are going to source their critical minerals supply, and that’s where projects like the KNP can play such a key role.
“Our Goongarrie hub, only 70 kilometres north-west of Kalgoorlie, is in the best operating jurisdiction in the world. We have managed to maintain 100% of the offtake, there’s been a great deal of interest in the offtake, we feel that’s key, and any offtake needs to be linked to project development funding.
“Everything in our flow sheet is proven, we are up to the fifth generation of HPAL technology, and we consistently say to people in this space that it is a race to be second – you don’t want to be using anything new and novel.”
Ardea completed a feasibility and expansion study back in 2018, which demonstrated robust economics. The company is now working on an updated study at a production scale of 3.5 million tonnes per annum.
“We thought it important to increase the project’s scale in response to the rapid growth and future demand for nickel,” he said.
“In terms of the supply chain, we have had some great commentary throughout the course of this conference, but the Chinese have really run and very strong race – they have been planning strategically, they have been doing it for decades and they dominate every aspect of the lithium-ion battery supply chain.
“We see the rest of the world rapidly trying to play catch-up, and we see government incentives around the word, so the outlook for nickel has never been better.”
