Norilsk Nickel Africa

• Tati Nickel (Botswana)
• Nkomati (SA)

БОТСВАНА

Tati Nickel

Norilsk Nickel acquired 85% shares of Tati Nickel as a result of the LionOre Mining International Limited acquisition on 28 June 2007. The Botswana government owns the remaining 15% in Tati Nickel.

Tati Nickel includes the Phoenix open pit nickel mine and the Selkirk underground nickel mine, which put on care and maintance.

The Phoenix mine is located 35 km east from Francistown (the second largest city in Botswana, located in the north east part of the country). This open pit mine is built on a sulfide deposit
of copper and nickel ores. The Phoenix open pit mining operations started in 1995 and include
the concentrator which processes ore mined using the traditional flotation technique. The concentrator capacity is 5 million tonnes of ore per year.

The Selkirk mine is located 15 km from the Phoenix mine and the underground mining operations began in 1989. In 2002, the underground mine was put on care and maintance due to the depletion of copper and nickel ores accessible for underground mining. As the Selkirk deposit also contains disseminated ore reserves, a fiasibility study is now being prepared for the open pit mining of these reserves and test operations are run.

Tati Nickel concentrates are processed on a tolling basis by the BCL smelter located in 200 km from Phoenix. BCL’s high grade matte produced from the Tati concentrates is delivered for further processing into refined metal to customers.

Currently, the first stage of dense media separation  plant (DMS) project is operating on the Tati Nickel site.

In 2008, the Tati Nickel produced more than 20,000 tonnes of nickel in concentrate.

Tati Nickel production history (on a 100% basis)

THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

Nkomati

Norilsk Nickel acquired 50% interest in the Nkomati joint venture as a result of the LionOre Mining International Limited acquisition on 28 June 2007. The remaining 50% is held by African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) – a leading mining company in South Africa.

Nkomati is located 300 km east of Johannesburg in the South African province of Mpumalanga and is the only primary nickel producer in South Africa. It also mines other by-product metals, such as copper, PGMs and chromium.

The Nkomati deposit includes several ore bodies, the key ones being the rich sulfide ore body
(ore with high nickel content, with reserves currently depleted) and the Main Mineralized Zone which contains significant volumes of disseminated ores with lower metal grades.
The Main Mineralized Zone opens new production opportunities following the depletion of the rich sulfide ore body reserves in mid 2007. The deposit also contains a Peridotite-Chromite Mineralization zone with lower metal grade as compared to the Main Mineralized Zone.

The extracted ore is processed at own concentrator using the traditional sulfide flotation technology with a capacity of 320 thousand tonnes of ore per annum. The plant produces up to 5,500 tonnes of saleable nickel concentrate per year.

In 2008, the Nkomati produced more than 2,600 tonnes of nickel in concentrate (on atributable basis – 50% share of Norilsk Nickel).

Nkomati production history (on a 50% basis)