STS112-E-5440 - View of Western Australia

Cosmos Nickel Mine is a currently inactive surface and underground

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow ...

mine Mine, mines, miners or mining may refer to: Extraction or digging * Miner, a person engaged in mining or digging *Mining, extraction of mineral resources from the ground through a mine Grammar *Mine, a first-person English possessive pronoun ...

north-north-west of

Leinster Leinster ( ; ga, Laighin or ) is one of the provinces of Ireland, situated in the southeast and east of Ireland. The province comprises the ancient Kingdoms of Meath, Leinster and Osraige. Following the 12th-century Norman invasion of Ir ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to ...

, along the

Goldfields Highway Goldfields Highway is a generally northwest–southeast highway in central Western Australia which links the Great Northern Highway at Meekatharra with Coolgardie-Esperance Highway south of Kalgoorlie. The highway is approximately in length, ...

. The

traditional owners Native title is the designation given to the common law doctrine of Aboriginal title in Australia, which is the recognition by Australian law that Indigenous Australians (both Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander people) have rights ...

of the land the mine is located on are the Tjiwarl people.

History

The Cosmos nickel deposit was discovered in 1997 by Jubilee Gold Mines NL, originally a gold explorer which had switched to nickel exploration the previous year. The Cosmos deposit stood out for its high-grade nickel ore, averaging between five and twelve percent where most other nickel mines in Western Australia operate at a one to three percent grade. Jubilee Gold planned to invest A$52 million in the project, of which A$38 would go towards the construction of a concentrator. In 1998, the company estimated an initial mine life of three years and a production of 30,000 tonnes of nickel in this time. While mining was initially envisioned to be surface only, an expansion to potential underground mining was announced in the following year. Mining at Cosmos commenced in 2000 and, in 2004–05, the mine transitioned from a surface to an underground mining operation. In 2007, Jubilee Gold, and thereby the mine, were acquired by

Xstrata Xstrata plc was an Anglo-Swiss multinational mining company headquartered in Zug, Switzerland and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It was a major producer of coal (and the world's largest exporter of thermal coal), copper, ...

for A$3.1 billion, at a time when nickel prices had surged. Shortly after the purchase by Xstrata, nickel prices crashed and, in 2012, the mine was placed in care and maintenance. During its twelve years of operation, the Cosmos Nickel Mine produced 127,000 tonnes of nickel in concentrate at a grade of 4.8 percent. At its peak, in 2011, the mine employed over 300 people, compare to just four in 2014, when in care and maintenance. Xstrata was taken over by

Glencore Glencore plc is a Swiss multinational commodity trading and mining company with headquarters in Baar, Switzerland. Glencore's oil and gas head office is in London and its registered office is in Saint Helier, Jersey. The current company was c ...

in 2015, which soon after sold the mine to Western Areas for A$24.5 million. Western Areas, in turn, was taken over by IGO Limited at a cost of A$1.26 billion in 2022. Of this, IGO financed A$900 million through loans and the remainder through its own capital. Apart from Cosmos, the acquisition also included Western Areas' Forrestania nickel operations in addition to its own Nova nickel-copper-cobalt operation. Shortly after the purchase, IGO announced that, to restart the operation and increase the concentrator size at Cosmos from 750,000 to one million tonnes per annum, an A$825 million investment was needed, three times the original estimate by the previous owner. At the time, IGO estimated that nickel production at Cosmos would recommence in 2024. Mining at Cosmos is planned to be centred around the Odysseus mine, which is expected to have a mine life of ten years and to produce over 10,000 tonnes of nickel per annum.

References

External links

Deposit Summary Report

Cosmos, Prospero, Alec Mairs, Tapinos, Odysseus, Mt Goode

IGO Limited website

MINEDEX website: Cosmos
Database of the

Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety The Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety is a department of the Government of Western Australia The Government of Western Australia, formally referred to as His Majesty's Government of Western Australia, is the States and ter ...

{{Nickel mining in Western Australia Nickel mines in Western Australia Surface mines in Australia Underground mines in Australia Shire of Leonora 2000 establishments in Australia