Ausenco’s Jervois nickel and cobalt refinery works: integration and constructability notes
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
Ausenco is mobilising a 50-strong multidisciplinary team in January to implement the Jervois nickel and cobalt refinery project in São Paulo, focusing on civil engineering consulting, electromechanical assembly, and project controls. Specialists in health and safety, quality, and project management will support both site works and office-based design and coordination. For engineers, the move signals upcoming demand for detailed brownfield integration, constructability reviews, and upgraded process infrastructure at an existing hydrometallurgical facility.
Technical Brief
- Fifty-person allocation implies layered supervision structures, enabling dedicated HSE coordinators per workfront.
- Co-location of office and site teams supports quicker design–safety review cycles for brownfield tie-ins.
- Inclusion of quality specialists suggests integrated QA/QC with safety checks on lifting, welding and pressure systems.
- Dedicated management and control roles allow formal risk registers and change-control for construction sequencing.
- Health and safety professionals embedded from day one reduce likelihood of ad hoc task-based risk assessments.
- Electromechanical assembly scope will require lock-out/tag-out regimes around existing live process equipment.
- Similar refinery revamps can benchmark this model of early, multidisciplinary HSE integration for brownfield upgrades.
Our Take
With Brazil postponing its 2026 auction of critical-mineral areas, as noted in the December 2025 item on ANM’s funding constraints, brownfield assets like the Jervois nickel and cobalt refinery in São Paulo become more strategically important as near-term sources of supply than yet-to-be-auctioned greenfields.
Nickel and cobalt feature in 27 keyword-matched pieces in our database, and most recent Brazilian coverage has focused on upstream resources, so a refinery-scale project in São Paulo signals more attention shifting to midstream processing capacity and potential domestic value-add.
A 50‑professional team dedicated to the Jervois project suggests Ausenco is treating this as a complex restart or upgrade rather than a light-touch refurbishment, which typically implies significant process-safety, environmental, and automation workstreams for nickel–cobalt circuits.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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