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Nickel Laterites

The case for low-grade sulfide nickel deposits – by Richard (Rick) Mills (A Head Of The Herd – October 4, 2022)

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Nickel deposits come in two forms: sulfide or laterite. About 60% of the world’s known nickel resources are laterites, which tend to be in the southern hemisphere. The remaining 40% are sulfide deposits. The main benefit of sulfide ores is that they can be concentrated using the fairly simple flotation technique.

There is no such technique for nickel laterites. The rock must be completely molten or dissolved to enable nickel extraction. As a result, laterite projects require large economies of scale at higher capital costs to be viable. They are also generally much higher cash-cost producers than sulfide operations.

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Indonesia’s electric vehicle batteries dream has a dirty nickel problem – by Rodrigo Castillo, Lilly Blumenthal, and Caitlin Purdy (Brookings Education – September 21, 2022)

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/

Indonesia—the world’s largest nickel miner—is making moves to become a key player in the electric vehicle supply chain. Most of Indonesia’s nickel output is currently Class 2 nickel, a low-purity type used for stainless steel.

The country’s government and the mining sector are determined to transform its nickel industry to meet the rising demand for Class 1 nickel, a crucial component for electric vehicle (EV) batteries.[1] EVs are widely viewed as a pillar of the transition toward renewable energy sources since they typically have a smaller carbon footprint over their lifespan than gasoline-powered vehicles.

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Vale Indonesia embarks on $8.6bn nickel projects with Chinese firms – by Erwida Maulia (Nikkei Asia – September 14, 2022)

https://asia.nikkei.com/

JAKARTA — The Indonesian unit of Brazilian mining giant Vale is embarking on three nickel processing projects worth a combined $8.6 billion with partners including Chinese battery materials producer Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt and potentially U.S. automaker Ford Motor.

Vale Indonesia on Tuesday signed a preliminary agreement for the latest of the three projects — all on the island of Sulawesi — with Huayou. It comprises a plan to develop a nickel smelter with high pressure acid leaching (HPAL) technology near Vale Indonesia’s major operations in Sorowako, South Sulawesi province.

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Indonesia Has Lost More Tropical Forest to Mining Than Anywhere – by Sheryl Tian Tong Lee (Bloomberg News – September 18, 2022)

https://financialpost.com/

Four countries accounted for 80% of tropical forest loss due to industrial mining, study finds.

(Bloomberg) — More than half the tropical deforestation caused by industrial mining in the last two decades took place in Indonesia, according to a new study.

The researchers, whose paper was published Sept. 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), overlapped the geographic coordinates of industrial mines with forest loss data from 2000 to 2019, focusing on 26 countries.

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In Sorowako – by Adam Bobbette (London Review of Books – August 2022)

https://www.lrb.co.uk/

Sorowako,​ on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, is the site of one of the largest nickel mines on earth. Nickel is an invisible part of many everyday objects: it disappears into stainless steel, the heating elements of domestic appliances and the electrodes of rechargeable batteries.

It was formed here more than two million years ago, when the hills that surround Sorowako began to emerge along an active fault. Laterites – iron oxide and nickel-rich soils – developed through the relentless erosion of tropical rain. When I rode my scooter into the hills, the ground duly changed colour, becoming red with blood-orange streaks.

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Column: Indonesian tax will shake up the nickel export mix again – by Andy Home (Reuters – August 5, 2022)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Aug 4 (Reuters) – Indonesia’s planning to reshape the global nickel market again. The country is the world’s largest and fastest-growing producer of nickel, used in both stainless steel and electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

It banned the export of nickel ore in 2020, forcing its mining sector to build out processing capacity. The huge flows of ore to China’s stainless steel mills have been replaced by shipments of nickel pig iron (NPI) and ferronickel.

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Pacific nations are extraordinarily rich in critical minerals. But mining them may take a terrible toll – by Nick Bainton and Emilka Skrzypek (The Conversation – August 3, 2022)

https://theconversation.com/

Plundering the Pacific for its rich natural resources has a long pedigree. Think of the European companies strip-mining Nauru for its phosphate and leaving behind a moonscape.

There are worrying signs history may be about to repeat, as global demand soars for minerals critical to the clean energy transition. This demand is creating pressure to extract more minerals from the sensitive lands and seabeds across the Pacific. Pacific leaders may be attracted by the prospect of royalties and economic development – but there will be a price to pay in environmental damage.

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New Indonesian nickel supply douses expectations for fresh price rally – by Pratima Desai (Financial Post/Reuters – July 21, 2022)

https://financialpost.com/

LONDON — Substantial new nickel supplies from top producer Indonesia in years ahead will ensure prices don’t return to levels that sparked chaotic trading in March, despite robust demand growth from stainless steel and electric vehicle battery makers.

However, prices now around $21,000 a tonne on the London Metal Exchange (LME), though down about 80% since hitting all-time highs in March, are still high enough to incentivise investment in new production capacity.

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Knotty nickel supply chain highly exposed to fresh shocks – by Frik Els (Mining.com – July 21, 2022)

https://www.mining.com/

The nickel market is hostage to two mercurial players: Russia’s Vladimir Potanin and China’s Xiang Guangda. Nicknamed the Nickel King and nickel’s Big Shot, both the bosses of Norilsk and Tsingshan have swayed the market for decades.

But now the pair’s impact on nickel trading is even more outsized, thanks to the war in Ukraine and the fallout of Xiang’s big short, which was built up on the belief his company can again transform the fundamentals of the nickel supply chain.

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Russia-Ukraine conflict creates uncertainty for high-grade nickel supply – by Darren Parker (MiningWeekly.com – July 11, 2022)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has created uncertainty over global supply of mined nickel – particularly high-grade nickel, which is used as battery-grade nickel in the electric vehicle (EV) industry – market research firm Fitch Solutions Country Risk and Industry Research (Fitch Solutions) said in its ‘Global Nickel Outlook’ report on July 8.

To illustrate the impact, last year, Russian mining company Norilsk Nickel alone provided about 17% of the global supply of class one nickel. In total, Russia accounts for about 21% of global class one nickel production, followed by Canada at 17%, Australia at 14% and China 10%.

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Tycoon whose bet broke the nickel market walks away a billionaire – by Alfred Cang, Jack Farchy and Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – July 6, 2022)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — By 2:08 p.m. Shanghai time on March 8, it was clear that Xiang Guangda’s giant bet on a fall in nickel prices was going spectacularly wrong. Futures had just skyrocketed above $100,000 a ton and his trade was more than $10 billion underwater.

It was threatening not only to bankrupt Xiang’s company, but to trigger a Lehman Brothers-like shock through the entire metals industry and possibly topple the London Metal Exchange itself.

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LME nickel chaos chills metals trading activity – by Andy Home (Financial Post/Reuters – July 7, 2022)

https://financialpost.com/

LONDON — The London Metal Exchange’s (LME) suspension of its nickel contract in March has led to a sharp drop in metals trading activity. Total LME volumes slumped by 21% over the second quarter relative to the first three months of 2022.

Nickel was unsurprisingly the biggest casualty with the Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) nickel contract also going into deep freeze. But the chill effect has spread through all the LME’s core base metals products in the last three months, suggesting an exit by institutional players unhappy with the exchange’s cancellation of nickel trades, a decision that is now being challenged.

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JPMorgan Exits Nickel Saga as Tycoon Shrinks ‘Big Short’ – by Alfred Cang and Jack Farchy (Bloomberg News – June 28, 2022)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — JPMorgan Chase & Co. no longer has any exposure to the nickel bet that rocked global metals markets earlier this year, after a drop in prices on the London Metal Exchange allowed the tycoon at the center of the squeeze to exit his positions with the bank.

JPMorgan emerged as a central player in the fallout from March’s nickel chaos because it was the largest counterparty to the massive short position held by Chinese entrepreneur Xiang Guangda’s Tsingshan Holding Group Co.

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Nickel, Tesla and two decades of environmental activism: Q&A with leader Raphaël Mapou – by Nick Rodway (Mongabay.com – June 22, 2022)

https://news.mongabay.com/

GORO, New Caledonia – Known widely as the “Madagascar of the Pacific,” New Caledonia is coated in remnant Gondwana rainforest and surrounded by reefs rich in marine life that constitute one of the largest marine parks on earth. It is a French territory located approximately 1,470 kilometers (900 miles) northeast of Brisbane, Australia.

Despite its size, New Caledonia punches far above its weight ecologically. It houses the longest continuous barrier reef in the world and is internationally renowned for its plant species, over 80% of which are endemic. The territory is also one of the world’s largest producers of nickel and holds a quarter of the earth’s known reserves.

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All eyes on Tesla as it invests in a troubled nickel mine – by Nick Rodway (Mongabay News – June 22, 2022)

https://news.mongabay.com/

GORO, New Caledonia — On the south side of Grand Terre, the largest and principal island of New Caledonia in the south Pacific, mountains rise like a spine out of a vast, turquoise lagoon that forms part of the longest continuous barrier reef in the world.

Although a French overseas territory, New Caledonia—located approximately 1,470 kilometers (900 miles) northeast of Brisbane, Australia—has been home to the Indigenous Kanak people for thousands of years and has a history and culture as rich as its ecology.

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