The FNO lies within the Forrestania Greenstone Belt, which is part of the Southern Cross Province of the Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia. The main deposit type is the komatiite hosted, disseminated to massive Nickel sulphide deposits, which include the Flying Fox and Spotted Quoll deposits which are currently being mined. The mineralisation occurs in association with the basal section of high MgO cumulate ultramafic rocks.

The greenstone succession in the FNO district also hosts a number of orogenic lode gold deposits of which Bounty Gold Mine is the biggest example. Some exploration for this style of deposit is undertaken by Western areas from time to time in the FNO tenements.

The Spotted Quoll Nickel sulphide deposit is located at the Forrestania Nickel Operations, 400 km southeast of Perth. Spotted Quoll is located wholly within Mining Lease M77/583. The deposit is hosted within a sequence of sedimentary, ultramafic and mafic rocks within the Western Ultramafic Belt.

The sulphide mineralisation consists of massive to matrix sulphides located in a possible shear zone in metasedimentary rocks overlain by a package of ultramafic and mafic rocks. The deposit belongs to the Archean komatiite hosted nickel type.

Spotted Quoll has high nickel grades also making it one of the world’s highest-grade nickel mines.

The Spotted Quoll orebody is open at depth with the mine currently planned to just over 1km below the surface. The primary stoping method is a ‘top-down’ mining method using long-hole open stoping with paste fill. The narrower and shallower areas are mined using top-down narrow vein techniques. Currently Spotted Quoll has a mine life exceeding six years, based on current reserves.

The CBC treats the raw nickel and produces a consistent nickel concentrate product grading approximately 14% nickel. The concentrate produced from the Forrestania project is characterised by low impurities such as magnesium which makes it more desirable to smelters.

The concentrator consists of a three-stage crushing circuit, followed by a single closed-circuit ball mill and a system of flotation tanks and thickening/filtration system.

The recovery rates for Cosmic Boy currently average between 85% and 90%. The recovery rates refer to the percentage amount of nickel recovered from the raw ore during processing.

At CBC a Mill Recovery Enhancement Project (MREP) has recently been commissioned. The MREP incorporates the use of the Company’s BioHeap™ technology to recover nickel from the tailings waste stream. The nickel recovered is then converted into a high-grade nickel sulphide product which can either be mixed with the CBC floatation concentrate or s ........