Western Areas has executed a Heads of Agreement to acquire the BioHeap sulphide leaching technology from Pacific Ore. The agreement provides Western Areas with an option period of up to six months to conduct due diligence on the BioHeap process, assess the global patents and licences and conduct test work on a range of low grade sulphide ores from the Forrestania nickel project in Western Australia. BioHeap is a bacterial heap leaching technology developed to leach low grade sulphide ores to produce intermediate products which can be sold directly to nickel refineries. A large amount of test work has been carried out on a range of nickel and copper deposits around the world and the technology has been successfully applied at the Radio Hill nickel mine. (more…)