Two year delay for BHP’s Ravensthorpe nickel mine

At the end of last week, BHP Billiton announced that it will be at least two years before its Ravensthorpe nickel mine in Western Australia reaches full capacity.

The original 2004 estimates for the cost of the mine stood at $1.05 billion, including the upgrade of a nickel refinery in Townsville, Queensland, but the project has been hit by a series of delays putting it nine months behind schedule and costing around $1 billion.

Current annual production is running at around 35% of full capacity, which is 50,000 tonnes, and the miner expects to achieve only 50% capacity in the first half of 2010.

Ravensthorpe will eventually become one of the world’s leading nickel producing plants.

The technology it uses is sophisticated and involves the leaching of laterites, which are dry ores that contain small amounts of nickel.

The Ravensthorpe site contains large quantities of the ore in a clay-like medium.