Horizonte Minerals plc has awarded a five-year mining services agreement to secure services for mining, stock pile generation, plant feeding and slag handling activities at its 100%-owned Araguaia nickel project in Brazil.
MINING FLEET
The contract with Fagundes Construção e Mineração further de-risks the project and ensures that “operational costs will be in the lower quartile of the nickel cost curve”, said the company.
Fagundes will provide a mining fleet of more than 70 units at any one time linked to the phase of mining sequence and seasonality, comprising leading brands in terms of safety, embedded technology, performance and reliability.
The core mining fleet will include 45-tonne hydraulic excavators, 35-tonne dump trucks, 28-tonne articulated trucks and 18-tonne wheel loaders.
Horizonte’s management will work closely with Fagundes to provide direction, governance and support as mobilisation of the mining services team is completed and pre-stripping activities begin in early Q2 2023.
SCHEDULE
Chief executive Jeremy Martin added that construction activities at Araguaia continued to run on schedule and on budget, with first nickel expected in Q1 2024.
“As we hit each of our milestones, we continue to move closer to unlocking the full value of Araguaia, and more broadly across Horizonte’s portfolio of Tier 1 assets, realising our objective of becoming a low-cost nickel producer.”