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Nickel Laterites

China’s refined nickel trade signals new production trends – by Andy Home (Reuters – February 6, 2024)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Feb 6 (Reuters) – China’s net imports of refined nickel fell to a near-decade low in 2023, capturing the tectonic shifts playing out in the global production chain. China’s call on Class I high-purity nickel has been waning for many months as the country ramps up imports of other forms of the metal from Indonesia.

Much of that Indonesian material has traditionally been nickel pig iron (NPI) heading for China’s stainless steel sector. More recently, trade flows have included rising amounts of matte and mixed hydroxide precipitate (MHP) destined for conversion into electric vehicle batteries.

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From Green Hype to Bailouts, the Nickel Industry Has Imploded – by Thomas Biesheuvel (Bloomberg News – February 3, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Just 18 months ago, the world’s biggest mining company was in a nickel frenzy. BHP Group, to much fanfare, had struck a deal with Tesla Inc. to supply it with the crucial ingredient for electric vehicles. It was about to go toe-to-toe with Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest for control of one of the globe’s most prospective mines.

For BHP, nickel offered a bright spot. Its management had earmarked the material as a key pillar of growth, a future-facing commodity that would help offset its exit from fossil fuels and let it tap into new demand driven by the world’s race to decarbonize.

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One Country’s Dream of EV-Driven Prosperity Helps Fuel a Coal Binge Instead – by Jon Emont (Wall Street Journal – February 4, 2024)

https://www.wsj.com/

Indonesia pitches its plan to leverage natural resources as a model for other developing nations

A few years ago, Indonesia set out to turn its treasure trove of nickel into an electric-car manufacturing boom.It imposed a sweeping ban on the export of raw nickel.

That meant that companies wanting to tap the world’s largest source of the mineral—used in the most powerful type of EV batteries—would have to build smelters in Indonesia. Officials bet that factories to make EV batteries and entire electric cars would also follow, spawning end-to-end supply chains close to the mineral bounty.

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Activists, Hollywood take down top 50 mining company – by Frik Els (Mining.com – January 31, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

The ranks of the most valuable mining companies in the world were throughly scrambled in 2023 as governments intervened, lithium and nickel prices tumbled, gold hit records and a new listing went ballistic.

At the end of 2023, the MINING.COM TOP 50* ranking of the world’s most valuable miners reached a combined $1.42 trillion, up a healthy, if far from spectacular $48.7 billion over the course of 2023. Mining’s top tier is also worth $330 billion less than in March 2022.

Metal and mineral markets are volatile at the best of times – the nickel, cobalt and lithium price collapse in 2023 was extreme but not entirely unprecedented. Rare earth producers, platinum group metal watchers, iron ore followers, and gold and silver bugs for that matter, have been through worse.

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Opinion: Critical minerals boom goes bust – by Jennifer Hewett (Australian Financial Review – February 1, 2024)

https://www.afr.com/

The collapse of lithium and nickel prices is a rude awakening for Australia’s miners, but also reveals the challenges in the Albanese government’s ambition for greater domestic manufacturing.

The West Australian government’s budget is still flush with mining royalties thanks to iron ore. But although iron ore will continue to sustain the state’s finances, last year’s excited rhetoric about Australia instantly becoming home to a rich new resources boom in critical minerals is now looking distinctly threadbare.

In early 2023, WA politicians were marvelling that lithium royalties had suddenly grown to be worth $1 billion a year, for example, albeit a distant second to iron ore. Then minister for state development and now premier Roger Cook boasted of WA’s ambitions in critical minerals processing, extending from lithium hydroxide to nickel sulphate to battery manufacturing.

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Indonesian nickel boom claims another WA mine, and hundreds of jobs – by Peter Milne and Simon Johanson (Sydney Morning Herald – January 31, 2024)

https://www.smh.com.au/

Battery minerals specialist IGO will close its Cosmos nickel mine in Western Australia’s Goldfields region at the cost of about 400 jobs as cheap production from Indonesia wreaks havoc with Australian producers. IGO chief executive Ivan Vella said the ability of Indonesian nickel miners to cost-effectively build new mines and processing plants and bring them to full capacity had caught the market by surprise.

Vella, presenting his first results since joining IGO from Rio Tinto in December, said the recent nickel price plunge meant it would not be prudent to bring the new mine into full production.

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Indonesia’s flood of nickel sparks ‘Darwinian’ battle for survival among miners Harry Dempsey, A. Anantha Lakshmi and Mercedes Ruehl (Financial Times – January 29, 2024)

https://www.ft.com/

Western capitals fear closure of unviable mines will increase China’s control of critical resource

Indonesia is flooding the global nickel market with low-cost supplies, forcing rivals to shut unprofitable mines and sowing panic in Washington and Paris that the upheaval will give China more control over the strategic resource.

The country, the world’s largest producer, expanded production by 30 per cent last year to 1.9mn tonnes even though global demand for the metal used in electric car batteries and stainless steel barely grew, according to investment bank Macquarie.

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Blade runners: how LFP batteries brought EV metal markets back to earth – by Frik Els (Mining.com – January 5, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

It’s January 2024, and unfortunately for said cobalt and nickel bulls the blow from the iron fist is even more severe than feared. And the runaway success has become a battery-powered juggernaut.

During that month nearly four years ago when Elon Musk first announced the move to LFP batteries, the cathode chemistry contributed less than 50 tonnes to overall battery metal demand, according to Adamas Intelligence, Toronto-based research consultants tracking demand for EV batteries by chemistry, cell supplier and capacity in over 110 countries.

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New Caledonia’s Prony Resources faces cash crunch on nickel slump (Reuters/Yahoo Finance – January 23, 2024)

https://finance.yahoo.com/

MELBOURNE, Jan 24 (Reuters) – New Caledonian nickel producer Prony Resources is facing an “alarming” situation amid a slump in metal prices as it waits for the possibility France will offer monetary support for the territory’s nickel sector, a company spokesperson said.

Prony’s struggles highlight the troubles of the French Pacific island territory’s nickel industry, the fourth-biggest producer of nickel ore globally, as prices have plummeted 40% in the past year on surging Indonesian supply.

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Opinion: Indonesia’s bid for EV nickel supremacy is doomed to failure – by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (The Telegram/Yahoo News – January 19, 2024)

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/

When Indonesia launched its bid to corner the world’s nickel market and gain a stranglehold on electric vehicles, it overlooked one crucial detail. Battery technology is moving so fast that the world may not need the nickel after all. Indonesia is cutting down its rainforests and polluting the Coral Triangle for what looks increasingly like a commercial mirage.

Cheap and safe LFP batteries (lithium iron phosphate) are already so good that they have conquered 70pc of the EV mass market in China. They use neither nickel nor cobalt.

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Report outlines cost of Indonesia’s EV dream as Chinese-funded nickel plants linked to pollution, ‘land grabbing’ – by Resty Woro Yuniar (South China Morning Post – January 17, 2024)

https://www.scmp.com/

A new report accuses a massive China-funded nickel industrial complex in Indonesia’s Maluku province of causing “significant” environmental destruction and existential threats to indigenous peoples in the area, adding to the array of issues the nation faces in becoming a major player in the global electric vehicle (EV) supply chain.

Released on Wednesday by the US-based Climate Rights International (CRI) advocacy group, the report also alleges that the Indonesia Weda Bay Industrial Park (IWIP) in Halmahera, Maluku, worked with Indonesian police to protect the interests of some nickel miners by engaging in “land grabbing, coercion and intimidation of indigenous peoples”.

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Surging exchange stocks pile the pressure on nickel – by Andy Home (Reuters – January 17, 2024)

https://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, Jan 17 (Reuters) – Nickel was the worst performer among the London Metal Exchange’s (LME) base metals last year by some margin as the market priced in a wave of new Indonesian supply.

Indonesia’s mined production rose by 29.2% year on year in the first 10 months of 2023, according to the International Nickel Study Group. Nickel demand is rising fast thanks to its use in electric vehicle batteries but nowhere near the pace of supply growth.

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Ravensthorpe nickel mine to cut 30 per cent of workforce as mining suspended amid weaker metal prices – by Jarrod Lucas (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – January 15, 2024)

https://www.abc.net.au/

The owner of the Ravensthorpe nickel operation on Western Australia’s south coast says it will suspend mining and cut 30 per cent of its 420-strong workforce. Canada’s First Quantum Minerals has today announced the changes in response to weaker metal prices — the second casualty in as many weeks for WA’s once-booming nickel industry.

Nickel is a key ingredient in stainless steel and lithium-ion batteries, but prices have fallen more than 40 per cent in the past year.

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Australia is ‘no longer competitive’ in nickel: producer – by Brad Thompson (Australian Financial Review -January 11, 2024)

https://www.afr.com/

The biggest nickel producer on the ASX says Australia is no longer competitive in the sector and its miners will never attract a so-called green premium for their product.

Nickel Industries managing director Justin Werner issued the dire warning with more than 1000 jobs in the balance in Australia after a plunge in nickel prices and forecasts Indonesia will flood the market with supply for years to come.

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BMI lowers outlook for nickel price – by Marleny Arnoldi (Mining Weekly – January 11, 2024)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

Research firm BMI has revised downward its nickel price forecast for this year to $20 000/t from $20 600/t as the market remains in a supply glut. Simultaneously, weak Mainland Chinese demand and a limited growth outlook across major markets will place a cap on prices.

Nevertheless, BMI foresees some support from the weakening of the dollar throughout this year, which will prevent prices from falling back to pre-pandemic levels.

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