MANILA - Listed holding firm MacroAsia Corp. is looking to invest in a nickel processing plant in the Philippines once it completes exploration activities in Brooke's Point, Palawan.

At the sidelines of the company's annual stockholders' meeting on Friday, MacroAsia Director Johnip Cua said investing in a processing plant would be a logical step for the company since nickel prices have significantly declined over the past year. He said it would be practical to process nickel ore, instead of just ship out the unprocessed mineral.

"We're disappointed with nickel prices. Nickel used to be $30,000 per metric ton, and it slid to as low as $10,000 last year. Now it's back to $16,000 per metric ton. It's about break even, so some profit can be made out of that," Cua said.

MacroAsia will be looking for a partner for its processing plant.

"We need to look for investors. We cannot do this alone," Cua explained, noting that a processing plant is costly.

Meanwhile, MacroAsia disclosed to the Philippine Stock Exchange that an initial review of 7 phases of exploration work at Brooke's Point indicated a total tonnage of about 67.02 million dry metric tons (DMT).

But MacroAsia clarified that "this is an exploration update disclosure and not a mineral estimation report."

Thus, the figures do not yet conform to PMRC (Philippine Mineral Reporting Code) resource classes as defined.

An initial report based on modeling of the ore envelope estimated the tonnage at 12.648 million DMT for limonite, 11.05 million DMT for earthy saprolite, and 43.32 million DMT for rocky saprolite, MacroAsia said.

The ores averaged thickness of 6.07 meters, 4.46 meters, and 7.31 meters with average grade of samples of 1.09, 1.15, 1.16% nickel, respectively, within each type.

"We will be completing the exploration program in the coming months," the company said.

MacroAsia commissioned Ramon Flores, a competent person under the PMRC, to prepare a report on the exploration work done at Brooke's Point, which is covered by the company's Mineral Production Sharing Agreement No. 220-2005-IVB. The MPSA was granted on  December 1, 2005. With Michelle Orosa, ABS-CBN News