For base metal new projects (with no production facilities around) they only have a hope of succeeding if you have lots of it, with at least 15-20 years minimum of mine projections and the grades have to be economic. Capital costs of these projects are ALWAYS in the plus 2 billion dollars, otherwise you are just pissing in the wind, forget it. Vale's and Xstrata's present nickel projects are in the plus 4 billion $ range. As investor, yes you can make money on smaller projects for a wile, but they will eventually fail. These facilties need huge infrastructure with required roads, rails, power etc. Therefore you don't find many of these at remote locations, in my oppinion the Ring of Fire is basically dead without huge government money. One problem they have is what they have lots of, namely chromites, does not pay the bills and what they don't have enough of, is nickel which could pay the bills.

Gold and diamonds are much easier since there is very little material to transport to and from, and the value of the Au and Diamonds justifies transport by air. Therefore you can build these facilities almost anywhere.

Yesterday Vale announced to shut down the Thompson nickel smelter(not mine and mill) basically because they can't meet the 2015 new government SO2 emission regulations. The basic reason is that, although yes they could convert the SO2 to sulphuric acid, they don't have any nearby customers to take the sulphuric acid off their hands. So, since they can't get rid of any sulfuric acid produced, and since they can't leak it out into lakes and rivers, the only real choice is to shut the smelter down and instead ship the nickel concentrate to Sudbury.

This again clearly shows that any sulfide ores found in remote areas will have a very tough time to succeed. Any such facilitiy will depend on cheap and capable rail shipping, and we now they cost money.