fundamentally sound an education lesson

There is one reason why nickel laterite projects do not use heap leaching. The geological make up of MOST deposits are not suitable for heap leaching.

Most laterite deposits are too high in iron which soaks up acid and causes clogging which stops the leaching process with high clay and contaminants.

The GME deposit has has moderate iron, low clay and low contaminates. This was demonstrated in the laboritory tests and is now being demonstated as a field test.

If you look at the the announcement dated 30/1/2008 you will notice that after 40 days GME have achieved 38% recovery which seems to better than mirror the laboritory tests.

The cost of setting up this project would cost about 600 million as opposed to 3bn for a high pressure plant.

GME has a large resource of 300 million tons at 1% or
$75 billion worth of nickel inground.