Conico Ltd: A royal flush – almost. 3 out of 4 lithium battery cathode materials in one deposit!
Conico Ltd Executive Director Guy Le Page on 3AW, 2GB, 4BC, 6PR Bulls N' Bears Report
Listen to ASX-listed Conico Ltd Executive Director Guy Le Page talk to Matt Birney on the Bulls N’ Bears Report about Conico’s remarkable mineral deposit in WA that may be able to produce lithium battery cathode pre-curser material.
TO LISTEN TO THE CONICO LTD AUDIO INTERVIEW - CLICK BELOW
Conico has two large exploration targets in Greenland with known occurrences of nickel, copper, palladium, gold, zinc, lead and silver. Closer to home however, the company is in a 50/50 JV at its Mt Thirsty project near Norseman just 200m from Galileo Mining’s heralded Callisto platinum/palladium/nickel/copper discovery. Conico has just upped the ante at Mt Thirsty after more than doubling the size of the nickel-cobalt resource and adding manganese to it.
RADIO INTERVIEW - TRANSCRIPT
Matt Birney - Welcome to Bulls N' Bears brought to you today
by mineral exploration company Conico Limited.
Matt Birney - ASX code - CNJ
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and I'm joined now by the Executive Director of Conico, Guy Le Page.
Matt Birney - Hi Guy
Guy Le Page - Hi Matt.
Matt Birney - So Conico has two large exploration targets in Greenland with known occurrences of just about everything including nickel, copper, palladium, gold, zinc, lead and silver.
Matt Birney - Closer to home however, the company is in a 50/50 JV at its Mt Thirsty project near Norseman just 200m from Galileo Mining’s heralded Callisto discovery.
Matt Birney - Conico has just upped the ante at Mt Thirsty after more than doubling the size of the nickel-cobalt resource and adding manganese to it.
Matt Birney - Okay Guy, what was the old resource at Mt Thirsty? And what's the new estimate now?
Guy Le Page - The old resource was 26.2 million tonnes at 0.12 cobalt, 0.54 nickel and the new resource, 146 per cent increase to 66.2 million tonnes. 0.06 cobalt, 0.43 nickel and we've added 0.45 per cent manganese.
Matt Birney - So how many contain tonnes of metal does that resource have in it now for each of those commodities?
Guy Le Page - Cobalt moved from 31 to just under 40,000 tonnes. Nickel moved from 141 to 283,000 tonnes and we've added 297,000 tonnes of contained manganese.
Matt Birney - Yeah well, let's talk manganese so that adds a new dimension to the project. How relevant is that? Given that manganese is part of a lithium battery cathode typically.
Guy Le Page - Well the significance is that we've got of the four metals that go into a precursor anode material, we've got three of them, mainly cobalt, nickel and manganese so that gives us the opportunity to participate in that precursor anode market which we didn't previously have that opportunity.
Matt Birney - How hard is this stuff to process? Do you need to separate the cobalt, nickel and manganese or are you trying to keep it together?
Guy Le Page - Well we're going to produce a concentrate and we'd probably produce a cobalt-nickel concentrate and separate out the manganese but it's not a particularly difficult flow sheet and the cathode precursor plant is conventional off-the-shelf technology.
Matt Birney - I know you've also discovered scandium at Mt Thirsty, what's scandium used for and how much does it sell for?
Guy Le Page - Well scandium is currently trading a million dollars US a tonne. It's got multiple uses, it's used as a hardening metal in aluminium compounds in particular and we seem to have some fairly high grades, upwards of sort of 40-50 grams a tonne.
Matt Birney - Guy Le Page from Conico.
Matt Birney - Thanks for joining me on Bulls N' Bears and remember we're only here to give you information not advice, which you should of course seek independently.
Matt Birney - I'm Matt Birney and this is Bulls N' Bears.
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