Sumitomo pursues nickel project

JAPAN’S SUMITOMO Metal Mining Co. Ltd. is pushing through with the $1.3 billion Taganito nickel mining project in Surigao del Norte, which it targets to complete within three years.

Once it begins commercial operations by August 2013, the Taganito mine is expected to produce an initial 30,000 tons of nickel ore a year for at least 20 years, said Arturo T. Manto, vice president of Coral Bay Nickel Corp., a company that is 54-percent owned by Sumitomo.

At the sidelines of the 2010 Philippine Mining Conference and Exhibition, Manto said that production at the mine could easily be expanded to as much as 45,000 tons. The high-grade ore to be produced from the Taganito mine will be supplied to Pacific Metals Co. Ltd. of Japan to produce stainless steel.

About 70 percent of the civil works for the mine has been completed, Manto said.

He explained that the original amount was a high of about $2 billion, but the company managed to bring the down by simplifying the design of the planned mine and processing facility. It was only last year that Sumitomo decided to proceed with the Taganito nickel mine project. During that time, it signed a memorandum of understanding on the joint implementation of the project with Nickel Asia Corp., led by its chair, Manuel B. Zamora Jr.

The Taganito project, Sumitomo said, was planned as a large-scale hydrometallurgical project that would apply high-pressure acid leaching (HPAL) process, a technology now garnering attention worldwide.

HPAL technology enables the recovery of nickel and cobalt from low-grade nickel oxide ore. Previously, recovery of valuable metals from such ore had been difficult. In August 2009, Sumitomo acquired a 16.5-percent stake in Nickel Asia.