Operations

Processing

The process plant at Savannah comprises a single stage crusher, SAG mill, flotation, thickening and filtering stages to produce a bulk nickel, copper, cobalt concentrate. Metallurgically the plant continues to perform extremely well. Nickel recovery averaged 88% for the year and cobalt averaged 90%, both well above design of 78% and 69% respectively. Copper recovery averaged 97% for the year, which is as designed. The plant was originally designed for a throughput of 750,000 tonnes per annum, but has consistently outperformed the design specifications. Process personnel are confident that the mill can operate up to a capacity of 900-950,000 tonnes per annum.

In January 2009, the operations adopted a campaign milling regime (15 days out of 21). This has been implemented very successfully and has delivered reduced costs to the operation.