Horizonte Minerals plc has started construction and broken ground at its flagship Araguaia nickel project in Brazil.
TIME FRAME
The company held a ceremony yesterday, 18 May, for the milestone marking the transition from development to the construction phase.
Horizonte said that the tier 1 project had a 24-month construction time frame with Stage 1 (first line) target production of 14,500 tpa of nickel.
Araguaia will be a large high-grade, scalable, low-cost producer, with a long mine life and will be a low-carbon source of ferronickel.
CONTRACTS
For the past four months, the company focused on early works and site preparation ahead of the main mobilisation of the earthwork’s contractor and basic and detailed engineering.
As at the end of April 2022, Horizonte had awarded contracts totalling US$204 million and expects to award soon a further $66m contracts on budget.
This represents in total approximately 50% of the company’s pre-contingency project direct capex.
INFLATION
The company said that it had an “embedded culture of continuous optimisation and business improvement” to offset the effects of inflation.
“This work is designed to allow for early optimisation in the engineering process and identification of cost-saving initiatives, a critical process in the current macro environment, and has yielded positive results to date.”
SIGNIFICANCE
“We are extremely excited to have broken ground at our fully funded Araguaia project,” added chief executive Jeremy Martin.
“We are a step closer to achieving our vision of bringing this project into production and generating first revenues.
“This all comes at a time where the nickel market is facing constrained supply which will benefit Horizonte as we become a globally significant producer.
“Whilst we are facing inflationary pressures along with all other global projects, to date we have been able to award approximately 50% of our pre-contingency project direct capex on budget, which is a very positive result.”