The Koniambo project processing plant, 110 m high, is the tallest manmade structure in New Caledonia. The plant, shown
here during construction, was assembled from modules fabricated in China and shipped to the site.

Xstrata Nickel holds a 49% interest in the Koniambo project. Société Minière du Sud Pacifique, the development arm of the North Province of New Caledonia, is its 51% joint venture partner.

With construction of Line 1 complete, the majority of the project’s construction resources are now being devoted to the second production line, which is forecast to be complete in the second quarter of 2013.

Koniambo Nickel is scheduled to ramp up to a steady-state production run rate of 60,000 mt/y of nickel in ferronickel by the end of 2014. The smelting process being utilized at the project is an updated ver-sion of the process used at Xstrata Nickel’s Falcondo operations in the Dominican Republic.

Nickel at Koniambo is contained in both saprolite and limonite materials, with grades that compare favorably with other laterite deposits in the world. The current resource base totals 75.6 million mt of measured and indicated saprolite resources at 2.47% nickel and 83 million mt of inferred resources at 2.5% nickel.

Initially, nickel will be extracted from the saprolite part of the orebody. Plans are in place for future expansions that will extract nickel from the limonite orebody, an undiluted inferred resource of 100 million mt of 1.6% nickel, using a hydrometallurgical process.