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Nickel miner Western Areas has told bidders for its product that it would prefer a customer who can help it develop new mines, as the race for a looming supply contract heats up.
Western Areas is running a tender process to find a buyer for 13,000 tonnes of concentrate a year, and the process has become strategically important to BHP Billiton's attempts to sell its nearby Nickel West business.
Any acquirer of Nickel West would require more feedstock to make the smelter and refinery operate at more optimum levels, and the supply contract that Western Areas is offering shapes as a logical purchase to fill that void.
Western Areas has received expressions of interest for the supply contract from 25 bidders, and said on Monday it wanted a partner that could prove its financial strength and viability.
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But managing director Dan Lougher said a customer willing to help the company develop new projects would increase its chances of success.
"We've got projects we want to develop," he said. "We want to look at whether potentially some of the off-take guys have got ambitions similarly aligned to Western Areas in terms of wanting to look at some growth projects or to participate in some of the projects we have available.
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