PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The future of mining giant BHP Billiton’s Nickel West arm appears solid as the company focuses on extending its current operating life from 2023 to 2032, and sinks cash into maintaining its asset integrity.

BHP, which has unsuccessfully tried to sell its nickel businesses, has invested A$2-million a month for the last ten months into maintenance and repairs at Nickel West. The spending will continue for the remainder of 2016 and 2017, said Nickel West asset president Eduard Haegel on Thursday.

He told delegates at the Paydirt Nickel Conference, in Perth, that one of the opportunities to extend Nickel West’s operating life was to identify prospects to extend the mine life of its Mt Keith operation, in Western Australia.

The development of the two deposits that make up the Yakabindie prospect was also likely to drive Nickel West’s ambitions to increase its operating life, with Haegel telling delegates that the company had dealt with both the high talc content and the underlying economics of both deposits.

“There has been some scepticism expressed about these deposits, because of their underlying economics or their high talc content. What may not be realised is that the Mt Keith concentrator was modified in 2011 to include a talc circuit,” Haegel said.

He noted that this A$152-million modification addressed high talc ores from the Mt Keith operation, and had been successfully operated for the last five years.

As far as the underlying economics of the Yakabindie prospect are concerned, Haegel said that Nickel West would treat the orebodies as satellite deposits, trucking ore to the existing Mt Keith mill.

“With respect to the underlying economics of the project, it is my view that there are no disseminated nickel deposits available in the local region that can fund the initial capital investment required to start a new mine and concentrator, or as we in Nickel West determined, to make a mill expansion.”

“However, our studies at Yakabindie proved that it is value accretive when treated as a simple satellite pit. By considering the mine in this way, making no changes to the concentrator, and therefore requiring no changes to services, and maintaining the fleet at Mt Keith, and hauling the ore back to Mt Keith, the capital investment is low.”

Furthermore, the company is also evaluating opportunities to develop the B11 deposit, at the Leinster operations.