MacroAsia gets ECC for nickel mine in Palawan

MANILA, Philippines - MacroAsia Corp. has secured an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) for its Infanta nickel mine in Brooke’s Point in Palawan, which covers a total land area of about 1,114 hectares.

The ECC was issued by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources after a thorough project review and a series of consultations were conducted principally under the supervision of the Environmental Management Bureau.

The Infanta nickel project is the company’s tenement under a mineral production sharing agreement (MPSA) with the government. This MPSA is a consolidation of MacroAsia’s eight mining lease contracts with the government.

“In 2008, the Supreme Court has ruled with finality that MacroAsia has vested and legal rights to its MPSA; and with this grant of ECC for operations from the DENR, MacroAsia has secured a major permit to bring back the mine to operation at the earliest time possible,” MacroAsia said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

MacroAsia is currently working on the declaration of mining feasibility for the project, and in talks with potential partners for the development of the project. It is aiming to export one million tons of nickel per year either to China, Japan or Australia. 

The company had sales and purchase agreements with Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. Ltd. of Japan and thus, had made shipments of nickel ore to Japan in the 1970’s until very low nickel prices forced the operations to be suspended.

At present, the Infanta nickel project has an existing road network within the tenement, and an available stockpile of nickel ore in the area previously mined.

Based on the Philippine Mineral Reporting Code -compliant report, MacroAsia has completed a seven-phased exploration program over 535.5 hectares or 48 percent of the MPSA’s total. The results indicate a total resource tonnage of around 88.36 million dry metric tons of ore.