Alliance Nickel has begun vat leach test-work on a bulk sample of NiWest ore as part of ongoing efforts to reduce capital costs at its wholly owned NiWest Nickel-Cobalt Project in Australia.

The company reported that around 2t of representative ore has been shipped to an overseas facility for testing.

The test-work, which started recently, will assess vat leaching as an alternative to the heap leaching process currently set out in the NiWest project’s 2024 Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS).

According to Alliance Nickel, heap leaching represents a significant portion of capital cost in the DFS, particularly through water infrastructure, which accounts for approximately A$310m ($214m).

Analysis to date suggests that replacing heap leaching with vat leaching could enable sufficient water to be sourced from the local Mt Kilkenny tenement.

This shift has the potential to reduce capital expenditure on water infrastructure.

The company also noted that vat leaching may offer metallurgical benefits such as improved solution distribution, faster leach kinetics and reduced leach cycle times.

The vat leach test-work programme is scheduled for completion in the third quarter of 2026.

If the results are favourable, the findings will inform updates to the current feasibility study.

The company has indicated that it will issue further updates as additional information becomes available.

Positioned within Western Australia’s nickel belt, the NiWest project is situated next to Glencore’s Murrin Murrin nickel-cobalt operation, which has been in production since 1999.

The NiWest project contains an undeveloped nickel laterite resource estimated at 93.4 million tonnes (mt), with average grades of 1.04% nickel and 0.07% cobalt.

More than 83% of this resource is categorised as measured and indicated in accordance with Joint Ore Reserve Committee 2012 standards.