News

July 03, 2007

Belvedere Starts Blasting at Newly Acquired Sarkiniemi Nickel Mine

By Rob Davies

Belvedere has made good progress in establishing itself as a nickel explorer and miner in Finland. The best proof of that came with the news that it has started blasting at its newly acquired Särkiniemi Nickel Mine and shipping ore for processing to the Hitura Mine on which it completed its acquisition on June 26th and marks a significant increase in the scale of Belvedere’s operations. While the Hitura mine is 340 kilometres away current nickel prices close to US$40,000 a tonne make it worthwhile.

David Pym, Chief Executive Officer of Belvedere, says the freight cost is Euros14 a tonne for each trip for ore worth US$400 a tonne so the numbers stack up. The Hitura mine currently produces 2,200 tonnes of nickel in concentrate from a total resource and reserve of 3.9 million tonnes grading 0.7% Ni.  In theory that only gives it a life of three years, but the mine has always operated on a low reserve and resource base and there is no great concern that the end has been reached yet....