DML | Our Projects | Dikoloti Nickel Project

Dikoloti Nickel Project

The Dikoloti Nickel Project comprises four prospecting licences covering an area of 612km², surrounding the three nickel deposits of BCL Limited in the Selebi-Phikwe region of NE Botswana. The entire project is within 45km of BCL’s concentrating and smelter facility, which is the largest nickel processing facility in Africa. Outside of the immediate environment of BCL’s operating mines, little to no modern exploration had been conducted prior to the exploration activities of Discovery Metals.

Dikoloti currently has an Inferred Resource of 4.1Mt @ 0.7%Ni, 0.5% Cu and 1.5g/t PGE’s at a cut-off of 0.5% Ni. With the sustained high in nickel prices, Snowden Mining Industry Consultants were engaged to re-evaluate the project economics of Dikoloti in November 2006. Using a nickel price of US$22,000/tonne in their re-evaluation, Snowden’s suggested the Dikoloti deposit had the potential to produce a Net Present Value of AUD$54 million (up from AUD$24 million). At today’s nickel and copper prices, Dikoloti could generate AUD$40-60 million in gross revenue.

Through recent test work by Geobiotics, LLC, Discovery Metals has found the Dikoloti nickel mineralisation is amenable to heap leach bio-oxidation processing using the GEOLEACH™ process. Greater than 74% nickel extraction from the ore was achieved after 160 days and 99% of the extracted nickel can be recovered from the bio-oxidation solution as a nickel sulphide, by use of sodium sulphide precipitation. The heap leach approach using GEOLEACH™ should have capital and operating costs which are significantly lower than conventional flotation processing.

Discovery Metals has earned an interest in the Dikoloti Nickel Project from Xstrata, who are currenly diluting.