Twitter

Nickel Laterites

Eramet Seeks New Partners for Indonesia’s Weda Bay Nickel Project: CEO (Reuters/Jakarta Globe – July 7, 2016)

http://jakartaglobe.beritasatu.com/

Tokyo. French mining and metals group Eramet said on Thursday (07/07) it was seeking new partners for its Weda Bay nickel project in Indonesia after two Japanese partners left.

“We are seeking partners. We’ve contacted some other groups including Japanese companies,” Eramet chairman and chief executive Patrick Buffet told a news conference in Tokyo. “We think there are very few deposits of this quality,” he said.

Mitsubishi Corp and Pacific Metals said in April that they will sell their stakes in the Weda Bay project to Eramet for about 11 billion yen ($108.94 million) due to slumping prices.

Read more

Can You Spare a Nickel, Mr. Duterte? – by David Fickling (Bloomberg News – July 5, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Nickel has been the worst performer of the London Metal Exchange’s six major metals over the past year. The key ingredient in stainless steel, which topped $50,000 a metric ton in 2007, has barely risen above $10,000 in eight months.

Between 60 percent and 70 percent of producers are losing money at current prices, Ivan Glasenberg, chief executive of the fourth-biggest producer, Glencore, told an investor call in December.

In trying to deal a blow to a mining industry he accuses of “spoiling the land,” Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, also known as the “Punisher,” may have just done global producers a favor.

Nickel traded on the LME rose at the fastest pace in more than eight months Monday.

Read more

COLUMN-A new threat to China’s nickel pig iron producers? – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – June 27, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, June 27 What sort of threat does the election of a new government in the Philippines pose to China’s nickel pig iron (NPI) sector? Incoming President Rodrigo Duterte has already fired several warning shots at the country’s mining sector, calling on local operators to “shape up” and stop “the spoiling of the land”.

His actions speak as loud as his words. He has just appointed a committed environmentalist, Gina Lopez, as Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, a position with broad oversight of the mining sector.

The Philippines produces a wide range of minerals but the immediate focus is on the huge amounts of nickel ore it ships every month to Chinese producers of nickel pig iron (NPI).

Read more

Duterte Environment Chief Decries Mining’s ‘Pathetic’ Record – by Clarissa Batino and Siegfrid Alegado (Bloomberg News – June 22, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

“Any kind of mining here puts our farmers and fishermen at risk; for
whom, for what, is this worth it?” Lopez asked. “We’ve been doing it
for a hundred years and usually, you do something and you know if
it’s good by track record. Well, mining has a pathetic track record.
Wherever there’s mining the people are poor.”

The Philippines will have an anti-mining crusader running the environment department, after Philippine President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s choice accepted the post this week. Shares of resources companies plunged a second day.

Regina “Gina” Lopez, 61, managing director of ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation Inc., said Tuesday that she accepts the offer to head the environment and natural resources department. The Philippine stock exchange’s mining and oil index fell 7.3 percent on Wednesday, the steepest drop in 10 months, after closing 4.1 percent lower in the previous session. Duterte offered the post to Lopez on Monday.

Read more

Philippines’ Duterte to review projects as environmentalist gets mining post – by Karen Lema (Reuters U.S. – June 21, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

DAVAO, PHILIPPINES – Incoming Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday warned he would cancel mining projects causing environmental harm as an anti-mining advocate accepted his offer to head the agency overseeing the country’s natural resources.

Environmentalist Gina Lopez said she had accepted Duterte’s offer to be the Secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, a day after the president-elect asked her to lead the agency, broadcaster ABS-CBN reported.

The Southeast Asian nation has among the largest untapped mineral resources in the region. However, years of opposition from the Catholic Church and a strong anti-mining lobby, as well as insurgency and widespread corruption, have stalled many projects including the $5.9 billion gold-copper Tampakan project in the southern Mindanao island discovered in 1991.

Read more

China’s Nickel Ore Lifeline at Risk as Philippines Talks Tough (Bloomberg News – June 22, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Nickel ore shipments from the Philippines may be jeopardized by President-elect Rodrigo Duterte’s appointment of an anti-mining crusader to head the country’s environment department, a move that may potentially disrupt supplies to Chinese buyers.

“We might see an imminent crackdown on Philippines’ small mines,” Sam Xia, an analyst at China Merchants Futures Ltd., said from Shenzhen on Wednesday, a day after Regina “Gina” Lopez, 61, managing director of ABS-CBN Lingkod Kapamilya Foundation Inc., said that she’d accept the role. “This will reduce its nickel ore exports, including to China.”

The Philippines has emerged as the key supplier of nickel ore to Asia’s top economy after Indonesia halted shipments in January 2014 in a bid to promote local processing.

Read more

[Archives: Sherritt International History] Marching to a different drum – by Jane Werniuk (Canadian Mining Journal – February 1, 2008)

http://www.canadianminingjournal.com/

Sherritt International is a resources company built from the bricks of a Canadian nickel miner, which recently celebrated its 80th anniversary, shown by the timeline in this article.

Sherritt International is a resources company built from the bricks of a Canadian nickel miner, which recently celebrated its 80th anniversary, shown by the timeline in this article. Despite the intervening decades and corporate upheavals, Sherritt is still a nickel company grounded in the strength of its research, technical innovation and operational expertise. But it has become international, and is aggressively focusing on growth in all its business units–metals, coal, power generation, and oil and gas.

In a recent two-hour interview with the company’s president and CEO Jowdat Waheed at its uptown Toronto head office, I learned that Sherritt has decided to get its story in front of the public, which prompted Waheed to invite me to visit the company’s metals, technology and coal offices and facilities in western Canada followed by a trip to see its Cuban assets, all in four days in early February.

Read more

Cuba sees nickel output steady at 56,000 tonnes; low prices bite – by Sarah March (Reuters U.S. – June 13, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

MOA, CUBA – Cuba is trying to reduce costs in the nickel industry to offset losses from low global prices, rather than raising output from 56,000 tonnes annually, industry executives said on a rare tour of one of the communist-led island’s plants.

The head of state monopoly Cubaniquel and plant managers said that despite the slump they were looking to foreign investment to increase capacity in the future.

Nickel is one of the top foreign exchange earners for Cuba’s beleaguered economy, and the country averaged production of around 74,000 tonnes in the decade after 2000. But nickel export earnings have been hit by plant obsolescence and a sharp fall in prices for the metal over the last four years.

Read more

New Caledonia’s President Germain says Noumea Accord process on track (Radio New Zealand – June 10, 2016)

http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/

The president of New Caledonia’s collegial government says good progress is being made towards a referendum on possible independence, despite several challenges.

Philippe Germain was in New Zealand this week on a mission to strengthen economic and political ties between the two neighbours. Territory is nearing the end of the 1998 Nouméa Accord, which sets the path for a vote on independence from France to be held by the end of 2018.

New Caledonia is grappling with political divisions as the referendum nears, including disputes over the drawing up of an electoral roll. Walter Zweifel began by asking Mr Germain, who does not support independence, what he makes of calls to stage the referendum earlier than 2018. His words are translated.

Read more

Mindanao miners reel from [Philippines] President-elect’s remarks (Business World – June 6, 2016)

http://www.bworldonline.com/

Manila, Philippines – OFFICIALS of some of the biggest miners in the country yesterday professed agreement with the next administration’s avowed policy of holding those exploiting the country’s mineral resources more accountable for environmental damage they may cause, but stocks of some of those with Mindanao operations yesterday bared investor jitters.

Global Ferronickel Holdings, Inc.; Manila Mining Corp. and Marcventures Holdings, Inc. yesterday saw substantial drops in their stock prices as trading ended after President-elect Rodrigo R. Duterte warned companies whose operations threaten the environment — particularly those in mineral-rich Mindanao — to upgrade their practices or face closure.

Stock prices of Global Ferronickel, Manila Mining and Marcventures fell 2.22% to 88 centavos, 7.14% to 1.3 centavos and 4.26% to P1.80 apiece, respectively, even as the bourse’s 17-stock mining and oil sectoral index to which they belong gained 0.13%.

Read more

South32 CEO Says Colombia Nickel Mine Needs Cash Flow Plan – by David Stringer (Bloomberg News – June 2, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

South32 Ltd., the diversified miner that’s cutting its global workforce on lower commodity prices, says its loss-making and strike-threatened Colombian nickel asset must deliver a plan to return to profits in the coming fiscal year to remain in operation.

Cerro Matoso is facing a deadline of July 2017 to demonstrate how it’ll begin to improve cash flow, Chief Executive Officer Graham Kerr said in an interview Thursday in Melbourne. The Perth-based producer is continuing talks with union members at the asset to avert a planned strike this month amid a dispute over a wage offer, he said.

“If they are not cash flow positive, if they can’t show me a plan to be cash flow positive, well we shouldn’t be running,” Kerr said. “We can’t cross-subsidize across the group, so if we can’t restructure if a way that makes sense, well then we won’t produce.”

Read more

South32 sees more pain ahead for miners – by Sonali Paul (Reuters U.S. – June 2, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

MELBOURNE – Australia’s South32 Ltd expects base metals and coal prices to give up recent gains, inflcting more pain on debt heavy rivals who will eventually be forced to shut loss-making operations, its chief executive said on Thursday.

Spun off by BHP Billiton a year ago with little debt, South32 produces nickel, manganese, aluminium and coal, commodities that have all slumped over the past year due to oversupply and slowing growth in China.

Chief Executive Graham Kerr said the rebound in coal and metals prices during the current quarter is unsustainable, given that markets are still oversupplied. “I think there’s a little bit of pain still to come,” Kerr told Reuters in an interview.

Read more

Sherritt announces plans to restructure $720-million debt load – by Ian McGugan (Globe and Mail – June 1, 2016)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Sherritt International Corp. is joining a flurry of miners that are buying themselves time in a tough commodities market by restructuring their debt.

The Toronto-based company said on Tuesday that it plans to push back the maturity date on $720-million in unsecured debentures by three years. The extension would provide breathing room for the money-losing nickel producer as it waits for prices to recover. “Upon completion of the extension, there will be no maturities until November, 2021,” David Pathe, Sherritt chief executive, said in a statement.

The move underscores miners’ need to carefully manage cash as the vicious downturn in base metal prices that began in 2011 slogs onward. In recent days, both First Quantum Minerals Ltd. and Teck Resources Ltd. have announced their own moves designed to ensure liquidity and push out debt maturities.

Read more

Workers Vote to Strike at South32’s Cerro Matoso Nickel Mine – by Andrew Willis and David Stringer(Bloomberg News – May 29, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Workers at South32 Ltd.’s Cerro Matoso, the world’s second-biggest ferro-nickel mine, voted to take strike action amid a dispute over negotiations on a wage agreement.

Members of the Sintracerromatoso union approved the move at the operation in northern Colombia, the union’s negotiator Eder Blanco confirmed in a text message. A strike must begin before June 14, and a deal to avert the action could be reached before then.

A previous strike at Cerro Matoso in April 2015 caused output to fall, leading to an increase in global prices. The nickel complex is among the world’s largest, with output of 27,200 metric tons in the nine months to March 31.

Perth-based South32 will continue to seek a resolution of the dispute, spokesman Tony Johnson said by phone.

Read more

China’s nickel imports still flattering to deceive – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – May 25, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON – China is importing more nickel than ever before. Headline imports of refined metal hit a new all-time record high of 49,012 tonnes in April. The cumulative tally of 157,600 tonnes over the first four months of the year represents a 115,000-tonne increase over the same period of last year.

Imports of ferronickel have also surged to 294,700 tonnes so far this year, which is already more than any previous calendar year with the exception of 2015.

Somewhere in this flow of material lies an unfolding bull narrative, one of falling Chinese production and resurgent demand. The problem is that there is too much else going on in the import data to get a good view of the shifting Chinese nickel landscape.

Read more