The Ambatovy orebody consists of two large, thick, weathered ultramafic lateritic nickel deposits located approximately 3 km apart. The regional geological setting is a north-south belt of basic gneisses and migmatites, which are part of the high- grade metamorphic rocks underlying the eastern two- thirds of Madagascar. The dominant feature of the Ambatovy resource is the Antampombato Complex, a large intrusive that cuts the metamorphic rocks. The intrusive is composed of gabbroic to syenitic rocks with two small outer ultramafic bodies rimming the intrusive. Exploration suggests that the complex represents multiple, magmatic intrusions that commenced with ultramafic intrusive, then was followed by gabbroic intrusives and terminated with the more felsic intrusive.

The Ambatovy Deposit occurs towards the southern margin of the complex and is approximately 3 km x 2.4 km and oriented in a west-northwest to east-southeast direction. A northwest trending gabbroic intrusive cuts the Ambatovy Deposit resulting in three sub- blocks: Ambatovy West, Central and Southeast. The Analamay Deposit is located at the eastern margin of the complex and is approximately 4 km x 2.8 km, oriented north-south and it also is divided into sub- blocks known as Analamay North, Central and South. Ambatovy West is cut by numerous block faults that strike northwest/southeast with a conjugate set, striking northeast/southwest. Evidence indicates that faulting continued during the laterisation.

The Deposits cover an area of about 1,300 ha, and range in thickness from 20 m to 100 m, with the average thickness being approximately 40 m. Within the lateritic profile, there are three distinct zones:

- Ferricrete is the uppermost layer, and forms an extremely hard, coherent crust of iron oxides up to 3 m thick and acts as a deterrent to mechanical erosion.

- Limonite, referred to locally as ferralite, constitutes more than 90% of the economic grade nickel mineralisation and is predominately a spongy mass with iron concentrations of 40–50%, predominately in goethite. Enriched nickel and cobalt grades are largely achieved by depletion of other elements through the weathering process, rather than additions to the system. The nickel grade of the laterite is influenced by the nickel content of the underlying bedrock.

- Saprolite lies at the base of the lateritic zone, on top of the bedrock.

The mining method used by the Ambatovy Joint Venture is open pit mining using an excavator/truck operation. Bench mining is executed in opened deposits using hydraulic backhoe excavators equipped with 5.4 m3 buckets and a combination of rigid and articulated haulage trucks. The mine operates 365 days per year. Ore is either directly fed to the OPP or stockpiled for future processing.

Pit Limits.
The pit limits are well defined; generally, the base of the pits is the floor of the saprolite (the exception being if the slope is greater than 27° when the bedrock may form the pit floor), whilst the lateral extents are constrained either by lease/environmental boundaries or economic limits.

Pit design parameters:
- Ramp width (single/double) - 30 m
- Ramp gradient - 8 %
- Bench height - 4 m
- Bottom pushback minimum size - 0 m
- Standoff from haulroad - 10 m
- Standoff from boundary - 30 m
- Haulroad gradient - 8 %
- Haulroad section - 300 m
- Pushback minimum width - 30 m
- Minimum switchback width - 60 m
- Bench face angle (batter angle) - 45 m
- Berm width – 8 m.

A mixed fleet is used at Ambatovy, large Cat 6030 and 6020 excavators and Cat 777 haul trucks (90-t payload) move the bulk of ore and waste material. A smaller fleet of Cat 385 excavators (90-t, 5.4 m3 bucket) and Cat 745 (41-t payload) articulated dump trucks are used for residual ore mining, stockpiling reclamation, quarrying activities and road sheeting movement and to assist the large fleet when capacity is available.

The ancillary and support fleet includes additional excavators, dozers, graders, wheel loaders, service trucks etc.

Processing and Recovery Operations.
The mine-site facilities includes, among other things, the ore preparation plant (the ‘‘OPP’’) and the slurry transfer pumping plant. These facilities are located between the Deposits.

Ore mined at the Ambatovy mine site is either directly fed to the ore preparation plant, or stockpiled for future processing.

Ore processed through the OPP is slurried with water in a rotary drum scrubber and the resultant slurry is screened at <0.8 millimetres to reject partially or un-weathered material with a high magnesium content. The screened oversize material is processed through a second scrubber and screening circuit that achieves high recovery of the limonite contained in the ore. The final reject material is used for road construction or is deposited into mined-out areas. The product ore slurry is thickened and transported down a 600 millimetre diameter pipeline that is approximately 220 kilometres to the Plant Site.

The route selected for the pipeline is as direct as practical, but some significant deviations were required to avoid environmentally and culturally sensitive areas. The design for the pipeline was prepared by Pipeline Systems Incorporated, a Canadian company.

The nickel and cobalt recovery process from lateritic ores that has been selected by the Ambatovy Joint Venture uses Sherrittdeveloped technology which is in operation at other facilities.

The Plant Site, includes, among other things, a pressure acid leaching plant, a metals refinery, and associated utility and ancillary plants including: water treatment, steam and power, hydrogen, hydrogen sulphide, sulphuric acid, air separation, limestone comminution, and lime-calcining and slaking. The Ambatovy Joint Venture holds several long-term leases for the land on which the plant and nearby tailings management facility are located. Such leases are registered at the appropriate local land titles registries.

At the processing plant, the slurry is thickened and pumped to an acid pressure leaching circuit consisting of horizontal, mechanically-agitated autoclaves. Sulphuric acid is added to the autoclaves to dissolve nickel and cobalt from the slurried ore. The discharged ........