BCI reports positive progress on Mardie salt PFS

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed BCI Minerals’ significantly progressed prefeasibility study (PFS) has provided further validation on the viability of its Mardie salt project, in the Pilbara region, Western Australia.

Over the past six months, BCI has completed material environmental, heritage and geotechnical activities, the results of which have informed the design and engineering work required to finalise the PFS by the second quarter of 2018.

“The Mardie salt project has been created from point zero in 2012 by BCI’s predecessor company Iron Ore Holdings and has now been progressed to be a focus project for BCI. During the next year, BCI plans to advance feasibility studies and consider partnerships ahead of a final investments decision,” BCI MD Alwyn Vorster said on Friday.

A positive scoping study, completed in July 2017, demonstrated the potential technical and economic viability of a three-million- to 3.5-million-tonne-a-year operation that can produce high-purity industrial-grade sodium chloride salt from seawater through solar evaporation, crystallisation and raw salt purification.

Following the interim positive outcomes of the PFS, a contract is being finalised with an international firm for the best practice design of a salt processing and purification plant.

Further, BCI awarded German engineering group K-UTEC a contract to undertake detailed investigations into the production of valuable by-products, including sulphate of potash.

“Subject to positive PFS results, BCI would then consider proceeding with a feasibility study, with completion targeted in the first half of 2019,” Vorster said, adding that this could allow construction to start during the second half of 2019 and the production of first export of salt product in 2022.