Was The 8FPX Analytical Method Correct After All?And will the Wale and Orca properties soon be returning to the menu?
I have posted before on the short-comings of Davis Tube assays ("DTR") but what some may not know is that the earliest assay work was done using a proprietary in-house acid technique called 8FPX. See Figure 26 on Page 32 for a crossplot of DTR verus 8FPX results.
https://aris.empr.gov.bc.ca/ArisReports/34556.PDF We see that DTR under-reports fine-grained awaruite by about half. For fine grain sizes, if 8FPX says .12%, DTR says about .07%. This discrepancy was what put the Wale and Orca properties far onto the back-burner.
Now if Turenne can come up with a flow-sheet that uses flotation to capture the fine-grained awaruite, will Wale and Orca will be put back in play? Mich is already in play.
Then the problem will become how to advance all these other properties simultaneously. Farming them out might be one option.
Further along the timeline, if the revised PEA indicates a low positioning in the first quartile of the nickel production cost-curve, then all of the FPX propeties, taken together, might be seen as a substantial competitve threat to the laterite nickel market.