The only mills I am aware of that can treat this ore(with high precious and platinum group metals which make this ore very valuable) would be those in Sudbury or possibly also in Thompson, Manitoba. If there is any closer that would be great. In my humble opinion, to be feasible a plant should produce at least 50,000 tonnes per year of nickel. At let us say an average grade of 1.5% nickel this is about 3.3 million tonnes of ore per year. Let us say they can ship 300 days per year this leads to 11,000 tonnes per day of ore transported on roads. I don't think that is economic nor environmentally acceptable. I therefore see no other choice but to build a mill next door.

In terms of the value of the ore we have to be careful. Over the next 5 years several new plants will come on stream(Ravensthorpe, Goro, Koniambo, Voisey's Bay, Unca Puma, Barro Alto, Skye?, plus low grade FeNi blast furnaces in China). What will be the projected metal prices with all this new capacity? nobody knows.

Although not directly comparable, what we know is that the capital costs of new plants such as the Konimbo and Goro are now estimated in the order of 3 billion, while they were only half that 5 to 10 years ago.