Inodnesia based miner Silkroad Nickel has started its application for an export quota for low-grade nickel ore and plans to have the quota in 2018, it said on Saturday.
Catalist-listed Silkroad Nickel - which was listed through the reverse takeover of China Bearing (Singapore) by a subsidiary of Singapore-incorporated Far East Mining Pte Ltd - has held a mining business licence for a 1,301-hectare mining concession area in Central Sulawesi province since 2009.
Disclosing growth strategies, chief executive Hong Kah Ing said in a media statement: "We aim to generate sustainable returns to our shareholders by progressively ramping up our production capacity with investments in equipment, infrastructure and people, with the addition of eventual export sales of our nickel ore."
He added: "We plan to explore the remaining area of our mining concession area so as to map out the next phases of growth and to identify new concession areas for future acquisitions."
The group noted that it has explored roughly two-fifths of the mining concession area - which it said was valued at a preferred market value of US$58 million by an independent valuer - and plans to keep on carrying out exploration drilling and evaluation activities in the rest of the area.
It added that the independent qualified person report has estimated the inferred and indicated mineral resources in the 494-ha concession block to be some 66.5 million wet metric tonnes (wmt).
Silkroad Nickel has said that it will resume trading - which has been suspended since China Bearing became a cash company in late 2015 - on Monday.
Source : Annabeth Leow / The Business Times
29 July 2018
