(MENAFN- ProactiveInvestors)'I have a nickel bar on my desk' says Jeremy Martin. It may not sound like much but for Horizonte Minerals (LON:HZM TSE:HZM) the arrival of that nickel into Martin's offices is a significant moment. It's good hard proof that the company's long-standing Araguaia project in Brazil really can produce the metal and more to the point that the company's proposed method of processing the nickel ore at Araguaia works. The plan has always been to process the ore using a tried and tested technology called a Rotary Kiln Electric Furnace. Now on a pilot scale Horizonte has put its money where its mouth is with a RKEF plant. 'We treated around 200-to-250 tonnes of ore in a bulk sample which we put through a pilot plant that ran 24 hours a day across an 11 day period' says Martin. 'It was very successful. There were no significant risks identified throughout the process route. In fact the ore behaved better than we thought it was going to. Most importantly it balanced in a steady state in the furnace.' All of which sets up Horizonte very nicely for the next phase of work. First off the company plans to integrate a large slug of new ground that it's acquired from Glencore into its pre-feasibility work. But that won't take long as Glencore had already done a great deal of work of its own including a piloting campaign that was conducted in Germany. 'Will we need to do initial piloting on the Glencore resource' says Martin. 'No.' But nonetheless there is a certain amount of fine-tuning to be done. 'We need to update the pre-feasibility on the Glencore acquisition to bring it in line with the pre-feasibility work we ourselves completed in April last year' says Martin. Once that's done it will then be straight into full-blown feasibility work on the combined projects. 'The next quarter is going to be very busy' says Martin. But what about the longer-term The first thing to note on that score is that Horizonte has been with this project a long time working it systematically forward step by step. The market hasn't been good for a while but Horizonte's ability and desire to progress has remained unimpeded. It currently has around £3.2mln in the bank enough reckons Martin to last for around two years. Whether the market will have picked up by then is open to question. But even if no Araguaia will still have its attractions. 'We're adaptive to market conditions' says Martin. 'We're lucky that the project has got flexibility.' And with the new Glencore assets inside it greater economies of scale and therefore better returns.
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