Good to know there are people with indeed mining experience. I didn't know the product out of El Indo went to Japan, before Barrick's time? I spent a year down in Chile, great place and lots of interesting mining.

In terms of the ROF ore I personally think what you propose is not realistic. The ore has too low a value to be shipped 800 to 1000 km. At best it will have 4-6 % Ni of some quantity, meaning 40-60 kg of Ni per tonne. In addition still about half of operating costs will follow(smelting and refining). If that can be made economic, then anything can be economic.

In terms of pelletizing, yes that is used in many kind of operations (although I don't know any for nickel), but both Inco and Falco use very fine materials as feed to their smelters. Falco uses fluid bed roasters and Inco flash smelts the concentrate with almost pure oxygen(works like a burner). In both cases the material needs to be pretty fine. The pellets could of course be crushed again, but both pelletzing and crushing costs extra money plus require equipment

In any way, the news about road construction material in the region is indeed excellent news