Tati Nickel Mine (Phoenix Open Pit)

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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 2009, the Tati Nickel produced nearly 17,500 tonnes of nickel in concentrate.

Reference for information:
www.nornik.ru/en/our_products/norilsknickelafrica/