BHP has raised its offer for Canadian nickel explorer Noront Resources by $128 million as it tries to wrest control of the company off billionaire Andrew Forrest.
BHP told Noront investors on Wednesday it was willing to pay C75¢ for each share in the company, under a proposal that values Noront at about $C443 million ($480.7 million).
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/
Mining giant BHP has raised its offer to buy Canadian nickel miner Noront Resources, trumping the latest bid from Australian billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest.
Just a day after the board of Toronto-listed Noront recommended shareholders accept the C70¢-a-share offer from Dr Forrest’s Wyloo Metals, its chief executive Alan Coutts said it now supported BHP’s offer after it raised its bid from C55¢ to C75¢ a share.
BHP and Andrew Forrest’s battle over a small Canadian nickel hopeful isn’t going to be the last M&A fight sparked by the energy transition.
Tick. Tick. Tick. BHP has just five days to decide whether it wants to try to top Andrew Forrest’s offer for Canadian nickel hopeful Noront Resources, which won the backing of the minnow’s board on Monday night.
The smart money is on the Global Australian striking back, despite the full-court press Forrest has put on the Noront board. BHP chief executive Mike Henry is chasing future-facing commodities hard, and nickel, which is crucial to the production of batteries, is a prime target.
Noront Resources has agreed to accept the “superior” offer by Wyloo Metals—controlled by billionaire Andrew Forrest—in a deal that values the Canadian nickel miner at C$321 million ($260 million), trumping the offer from rival BHP Group.
Wyloo’s offer of C$0.70 a share represents a 27% premium to the C$0.55 bid made by BHP in July, the Toronto-based company said late Monday in a statement. BHP has five business days to match Wyloo’s offer, Noront said.
https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/
The area around a former Pickle Lake gold mine is hot property for Auteco MInerals. The Australian junior miner expects to build a considerable gold base by the time a 50,000-metre drill program wraps up later this year.
Auteco believes its Pickle Crow Gold Project has the potential to be a sizeable mining camp based on what they estimate is in the ground, what they see in the assays, and what the geology is telling them.
Electric vehicle giant Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) has inked a multi-year nickel supply deal with New Caledonia’s Prony Resources, which guarantees the US carmaker about 42,000 tonnes of the metal needed to produce the batteries that power its EVs.
Prony, which bought the loss-making nickel and cobalt operations in the French territory from Vale (NYSE: VALE) earlier this year, said it’s targeting production of 44,000 tonnes of nickel by 2024. That’s about double the expected 2021 output.
Washington| Australian miners stand to benefit from the addition of nickel to a critical minerals list designed to help the US fix supply gaps in batteries and other energy technologies.
Australia produces 24 per cent of the world’s nickel, according to government data, and the metal’s inclusion on the list could spur development of new mines and expansion of existing sites both in the US and Australia. The metal is used to strengthen alloys found in batteries, electronics, military hardware and a range of energy technologies.
Nickel processing is dominated by China.
Washington | Australia is in pole position to benefit from a sixfold increase in demand for so-called “critical minerals” worth $US12.9 trillion ($17.6 trillion) over the next two decades, driven by the race to hit net zero emissions, according to analysis from the International Monetary Fund.
In its latest World Economic Outlook, the Washington-based multilateral lender projects that a steady 15 per cent increase in its metal price index will bolster Australia’s annual economic growth by 1 percentage point, further strengthening the government’s finances.
BHP (ASX, LON, NYSE: BHP) said on Friday it had produced the first nickel sulphate crystals from its plant in Kwinana, outside Perth, a part of the miner’s strategy to grow its battery metals footprint to meet expected soaring demand.
Nickel is a key component for electric vehicle (EV) cathodes, and the world’s no. 1 mining company expects demand for the metal from the batteries sector alone to increase by 500% over the next decade.
LAUNCESTON, Australia (Reuters) – China is paying a high price for policies that curbed domestic coal output and imports, and led to a shortage of the fuel that still largely powers the world’s second-largest economy.
The good news for Beijing is that while the scarcity of coal will cause problems for energy-intensive industries, such as steel and aluminium, the situation is likely to be resolved relatively quickly.
If the end of coal is near, it’s hard to see it among the open pits and billowing cooling towers of Victoria’s Latrobe Valley and the Hunter in NSW. Canyons of brown and black coal, set between green paddocks and sloping hills, loom large in these mining districts and dominate their economies as a source of great wealth, just as they have for a century or more.
A global push is accelerating to eliminate the use of thermal coal — the worst-emitting source of energy — to restrain the planet’s rising temperature and avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
(Bloomberg) — European automakers are in discussions with Australian rare earths explorer Arafura Resources Ltd. about sourcing elements that help power electric cars from outside China, which dominates global supply.
The miner is developing the A$1 billion ($728 million) Nolans project in Australia’s Northern Territory that will cover as much as 10% of global demand for the type of rare earths used in permanent magnets for electric motors.
With the rising tide of battery electric vehicles making a splash all across the world, the most coveted natural resource needed to power our vehicles is no longer petrol but a mineral called ‘lithium’. While it’s debatable whether lithium is the most important element found in a lithium-ion battery, its extensive mining across certain global hotspots has come under heavy criticism.
The very process of mining lithium is not only energy-intensive and polluting, it may also be linked with destabilising the ecosystem nearby due to extensive saltwater depletion from the edge of the ‘salars’ through which lithium is extracted.
The effort to better acknowledge and include First Nations peoples in the Australian mining industry is advancing as more Indigenous initiatives are introduced and more Indigenous contracts awarded.
While some mining companies can still improve their Indigenous engagement, there are instances that indicate a concerted effort to prioritise First Nations recognition and involvement.
Australian miner Sandfire Resources will spend more than twice its market capitalisation to solve its growth problems, unveiling a $2.57 billion Spanish mine acquisition that investors described as “transformational” and “a game changer”.
Sandfire will take on new debt and ask investors to buy $1.2 billion of new shares to fund the $US1.86 billion ($2.57 billion) acquisition of Spain’s Minas D’Aguas Tenidas (MATSA) mine, which is located north-west of Seville.
