Perth explorer Vulcan Resources has fast-tracked its path to production, buying a large copper and nickel processing plant near its Finland tenements.
Vulcan, which is in the middle of a corporate merge with Universal Resources, said it had bought the plant from the bankruptcy estate of a Finnish subsidiary of Canadian miner, Belvedere Resources.
The plant has the capacity of 350,000 tonnes a year though can be upgraded to 600,000 tpa. It is 45km from Vulcan's Kylylahti deposit. Vulcan reported that the plant was on care and maintenance and estimated the cost to refurbish and upgrade at about $10 million.
Vulcan also bought an additional 3.3 million tonnes of copper-nickel-cobalt resources in the Kylylahti area, bring its total resource in the area to 15.6 million tonnes.
Vulcan managing director Dr Alistair Cowden said the purchase of the plant was a ``cornerstone asset'' to build on after the company's merger with Universal.
``The possession of built and permitted processing infrastructure is an important step in the path to development and towards our aim of building a mid-tier base metal miner.'' he said.
The move also gives Vulcan: A processing plant; an 8.1 million tonne copper-nickel-cobalt deposit that has a completed feasibility study; a 3.2 million tonne nickel-copper-cobalt resource; three more deposits with 35km of the plant; and exploration targets in two further nickel-copper deposits.
The company said it will now review and update its feasibility study for the Kylylahti project to incorporate the plant. It aims to make a development decision before mid-2010.
Source: Perth Now
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