FinnCobalt, which attended at this years Mines and Technology (aka Vulcan Hautalampi Oy) is a private Finnish company which owns the ground and all mining rights of the Hautalampi Cobalt-Nickel-Copper Mine in Finland.
The representative of the company, Timo Penttilä, told at the London mine tech show that the Hautalampi Mine is located in Outokumpu town and has been previously known as the Cobalt-Nickel parallel of the historic Outokumpu (Keretti) Copper mine. Outokumpu Oyj developed the Hautalampi Mine from 1985 to 1986: 11 kilometres of diamond drilling, a boxcut, 2.1 kilometres of drifting, including the decline and the ventilation rise, was done but the project was ceased due to a sudden collapse of the cobalt price.
The project was further developed between 2007 and 2009 by drilling an additional 10 kilometres and preparing a complete Feasibility Study.
The current NI-43-101 compliant mining reserve is 2.2 Mt @ Ni 0.38%, Co 0.10%, Cu 0.32%. The production plan is based on a 7-year underground mining operation with an average annual mining rate of 350 000 t @ 0.4% Ni, 0.3% Cu, 0.1% Co via an existing underground decline.
An upside potential is great – an unmined, historical resource of 0.5 Mt @ 3% copper has been identified in the pillars of the old Outokumpu copper mine. In addition, some 5.4 Mt of the Co-Ni exploration target has been identified from the historical core logs.
This autumn FinnCobalt will be drilling for metallurgical samples. The aim of the metallurgical test work is, together with Outotec Oyj, to develop a process to produce battery grade Co- and Ni-chemicals from the concentrates produced from the Hautalampi deposit.
The recent cobalt price increase has clearly improved the project economics and the company is working on financing options.
