g t lepage: a director or nest builder, page-9

well lukentel its a done deal legally, they just have to stump up $6million cash over the next 6 months to finalise settlement

Within a few weeks I expect the updated JORC to come out based on another round of drilling just finished by Barra .

The key to the project is the cobalt. Its a very unusual nickel laterite deposit because of the high cobalt grade and the ease with which, in preliminary testing , the cobalt can be recovered under atmospheric leaching conditions,

Cobalt trades at $100,000 a tonne versus $22,000 for nickel.

Cobalt bulls like me believe that the ramp up in production of electric and hybrid cars over the next few years will underpin a very strong cobalt price a long way into the future. Cobalt is the key metal in all hybrid and plug in electric car batteries

As for the projected cash flows from the project they are huge based on $100,000 a tonne cobalt. However all heap leach projects of this nature carry over the average risk of failure. Worth a punt though! Especially if you believe electric cars are the future. The potential failure of heap leach projects usually just comes down to bad management and lack of experience . What they need to do is steal the blokes running Minara's successful heap leach project!