NOT's ores consist mainly of pentlandite, a nickel-iron- sulfide mineral. In addition there are copper containing minerals, as well as various precious metals such as gold and silver, and even more importantly the platinum group metals with platinum, rhodium and palladium.
From a money point of view, we are mainly interested in the nickel minerals that also contain most of the platinum group metals. Although there is chalcopyrite, the copper containing mineral, it is not as important since the price of copper is much less than that of nickel.
At Norilsk(huge nickel producer) in Russia with a high content of platinum group metals, the recovery of these metals pays more or less for all the operating costs of the whole facility, so yes in high contents they are very important.
Typically the ores contain about 2% nickel as the main valuable metal. The ores are treated in a mineral processing facility basically to separate away the iron sulfide minerals and the product from this, called a concentrate, contains around 15 to 20% nickel. This means that the nickel has been enriched about 7 to 10 times to reduce the amount required for shipping to a smelter somewhere. However, what has been separated away, roughly 90% of the whole ore, causes environmental problems if left around and has to be processed and stored in large tailings dams. This is potentially the biggest environmental issue of the whole treatment process, since basically they have to be stored forever and not allowed to dissolve and leak out into the environment. This is done successfully presently in Sudbury and other places, so yes it can be done, but for sure pretty rigorous environmental assessments have to be met before permits are provided.
The various valuable metals will be recovered, at least 90%, in the nickel and possibly also a copper conentrate, and then shipped to a nickel smelter for further enrichment and then a refinery for final recovery.
The future expected prices of all the various metals are critical to any financial evaluation. To do this they look at expected future demand and then compare that to future expected production rates of the various metals. They have to try to do this for at least 10 to 15 years forward. This is easier to do when purchasing an already existing plant since production is already ongoing, but it is much harder for a project like in the ROF since they also do not know the exact start-up date, which could easily be 5 to 10 years ahead. These uncertainties are some of the reasons why companies like Vale and Xstrata do not jump on any such development. They may consider just to wait and let someone else do most of the ground work before deciding. Although they will have to pay more, there will be more certainty and the time line to reach production will be less.
The grades and value of the ores found so far are outstanding, but more has to be discovered to justify all the necessary infrastructure and processing facilities. Seeing all the progress so far I suspect that much more will be found at various locations under various ownerships. For sure the ROF will be on the headlines for years to come.
