News

June 23, 2008

Ridge Mining Is Ready To Go At Sheba’s Ridge, So Long As It Can Get Power And A Smelter

By Alastair Ford

SRK has just completed a technical audit on the bankable feasibility study for Ridge Mining’s Sheba’s Ridge nickel-platinum property. SRK confirmed that Sheba’s Ridge contains 740,000 tonnes of nickel, 290,000 tonnes of copper, and 10.7 million ounces of platinum group elements (PGEs). On current plans the project will have annual output of 23,000 tonnes of nickel, 11,000 tonnes of copper and 352,000 ounces of PGEs. The company was slightly vague on the exact economics of the project, and for good reason: they could be completely transformed if plans for a smelter also get the go-ahead. At the moment studies for the smelter are at the pre-feasibility stage, whereas the studies on the concentrate production from Sheba’s Ridge are fully bankable, so it will be a little while before more detail is forthcoming.

But the broad brush strokes are clear. In conjunction with Impala, the IDC and African Rainbow Minerals, Ridge plans to build a smelter on or near the Sheba’s Ridge site, to take the project all the way through to the production of hard metal. Sheba’s Ridge would provide the primary feed for this new smelter, but it would take in ore from other projects too. The logic for constructing a new smelter is quite simple: there isn’t currently enough capacity in South Africa to take the projected...