Twitter

Nickel Laterites

Editorial: Queensland mining at risk from law to rein in Clive Palmer (The Courier Mail – May 16, 2016)

http://www.couriermail.com.au/

LIKE all jurisdictions, Queensland needs to take particular care to keep itself competitive when attracting development and jobs.

According to resource sector leaders, major national and international companies are becoming increasingly reluctant to go ahead with investments in Queensland because of the high fixed regulatory costs they face in this state. And the release of this finding yesterday came amid worrying claims from resource sector chiefs that some unintended consequences have occurred from the recent green laws used to make failed developer Clive Palmer operate properly.

After Mr Palmer’s ill-fated Queensland Nickel refinery in Townsville shut its doors and caused hundreds of workers to lose their livelihoods, the company was properly caught by regulations aimed at making resource companies live up to their environmental responsibilities and make sure the operation did not fall short of what is required for a clean and healthy industrial site.

Read more

Sherritt International CEO confident that debt issues will be fixed without painful restructuring – by Peter Koven (National Post – May 11, 2016)

http://business.financialpost.com/

TORONTO — The chief executive of Sherritt International Corp. said Tuesday he is confident the company will avert a painful restructuring despite its big debt load and woeful nickel prices.

“I expect we’ll be able to do something that works for all stakeholders,” David Pathe said in an interview at the company’s annual meeting in Toronto. He did acknowledge that the situation is highly dependent on what happens in the nickel market.

Toronto-based Sherritt is a victim of timing. The company and its partners spent a staggering US$5.3 billion to develop the Ambatovy mine in Madagascar over the past several years, and nickel prices plummeted just as production was ramping up. As a result, the mine is not generating the cash its owners expected.

Read more

Inside Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel mess – by Trevor Sykes (Australian Financial Review – May 5, 2016)

http://www.afr.com/

Since Queensland Nickel went into liquidation on April 21 everyone has been worrying about the workers who’ve been retrenched from the Yabulu nickel refinery at Townsville.

Well, from a reading of the report by FTI Consulting on Queensland Nickel, the workers were lucky to keep their jobs as long as they did. Because if Yabulu were owned by Pierpont, he would have closed it 18 months ago.

FTI reckoned Queensland Nickel Pty Ltd (let’s call it QN) has been insolvent since November 27, 2015 when it was unable to pay a debt of $11.9 million to the Aurizon transport group. Aurizon issued QN with a notice of default on that day.

Read more

UPDATE 1-French PM commits 200 mln euros to support New Caledonia nickel producer – by Ccile Lefort (Reuters U.S. – April 29, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

France will lend up to 200 million euros ($228 million) to support struggling New Caledonia nickel producer Societe Le Nickel (SLN), Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Friday.

Valls, who is visiting the French territory, said the financing will be in place until 2018 with final terms still under discussion. The aid package comes at a time when nickel prices are hovering near 13-year lows. The mineral is crucial to New Caledonia as it accounts for about a fifth of its economy.

Earlier this year, the territory lost a key Australian customer which fell into insolvency. “The situation is serious,” said Valls. “SLN is facing an unprecedented crisis.”

Read more

Column: How Shanghai trading is changing the physical nickel market – Andy Home (Reuters U.S.- April 29, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON – Everyone’s talking about Chinese speculators. This year has seen an unprecedented surge of trading volumes and open interest in Chinese markets as institutional and retail investors pour money into commodities.

Both the Shanghai Futures Exchange (ShFE) and the Dalian Exchange are upping margin requirements and transaction fees to try and calm overheating contracts such as steel rebar and iron ore.

The stampede appears to have been halted with both prices and trading activity losing some of their recent froth. But the current trading frenzy shouldn’t distract from the growing global influence of China’s domestic commodity exchanges.

Read more

France to lend $340 mln to New Caledonia nickel group – media (Reuters U.S. – April 26, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

France is set to provide 300 million euros ($340 million) in loans to New Caledonia nickel producer Societe Le Nickel (SLN) as it struggles with weak prices for the metal, a French weekly newspaper reported.

Le Journal du Dimanche reported the move on Sunday, citing unidentified sources. It comes as French Prime Minister Manual Valls is due to visit the French territory in the Pacific later this week.

Nickel output accounts for about a fifth of New Caledonia’s economy. But a slump in prices is pressuring its three smelters, owned by Glencore, Vale and SLN, a unit of French conglomerate Eramet.

New Caledonia holds around a quarter of the world’s reserves of nickel, used in everything from stainless steel to batteries.

Read more

Quarter of Nickel Miners Seen Battling to Survive in Price Rout – by Joe Deaux (Bloomberg News – April 12, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

A quarter of the world’s nickel miners are caught in a game of chicken, churning out the stainless steel ingredient at a loss in the hope that competitors will shut first, according to research firm IHS Inc.

The price of nickel slumped 30 percent in the past year, the worst performance among major metals traded on the London Metal Exchange, as slowing demand helps feed a global glut. Stockpiles on the LME are up fivefold since 2011, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates a surplus of 90,000 metric tons in 2016, according to a Feb. 8 report.

“Very few industries can support that, and yet we’ve seen a minimal supply-side reaction,” Jason Kaplan, a commodities research manager at Englewood, Colorado-based IHS, said Tuesday in a telephone interview. “Everybody is looking at each other hoping that the guy down the street will fail before them.”

Read more

Clive Palmer under fire in damning Queensland Nickel report – by Michael Smith (Australian Financial Review – April 12, 2016)

http://www.afr.com/

Do not underestimate Clive Palmer’s ability to survive the damning allegations now facing the larger-than-life mining entrepreneur turned politician and the way his failed Queensland Nickel business was run.

Administrator John Park told journalists that Palmer and his nephew and fellow director Clive Mensink​ behaved “recklessly” and used Queensland Nickel as a “piggy bank” to dissipate funds throughout his business empire when required.

Palmer’s political career looks short-lived if media reports of the rising tide of resentment towards him in his own state are correct, and he potentially faces further action over the way the company operated.

Read more

France considering capital increase for Eramet – newsletter (Reuters U.S. – April 4, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

The French government is looking at a comprehensive solution to revive Eramet which could include a capital increase of the ailing mining group, newsletter Lettre de l’Expansion said on Monday.

The company posted a full-year loss of 714 million euros ($812 million) in February, mainly hit by a downturn at its nickel division that has been battered by 12-year price lows linked to global oversupply and slowing Chinese demand.

Discussions took place last week between the French Investment Agency (APE), part of the economy ministry, and the Duval family, the largest shareholder of Eramet, La Lettre de l’Expansion said.

Read more

Philippines’ major nickel miner seals China supply deals (Reuters U.S. – March 28, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

MANILA – Global Ferronickel Holdings Inc, the Philippines’ second-biggest nickel ore miner, signed contracts with Chinese buyers, including Baosteel, equivalent to about 90 percent of its nickel ore output target for this year, it said on Monday.

The supply deals as well as efforts to cut operating costs amid the slump in nickel pricessince last year should help the company stay profitable this year, it said. Nickel prices have fallen due to rising stockpiles and weak Chinese demand.

Philippine nickel ore producers, the biggest suppliers to top market China of the metal used in making stainless steel, agreed earlier this month to slash output and exports in 2016 by as much as 20 percent in response to weak prices.

Read more

Axiom Mining’s nickel license revoked by Solomon Islands’ court (Reuters U.S. – March 22, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

TOKYO – The development of a large nickel deposit in the Solomon Islands is back to square one this week, as the nation’s highest court ruled that neither of the two firms in Japan and Australia fighting over the discovery were entitled to the license.

The Solomon Islands Court of Appeal on Monday rejected a portion of Sumitomo Metal Mining’s appeal that the country’s government should not have cancelled in 2011 Sumitomo’s license to develop the Isabel nickel laterite discovery.

In the same ruling, the Court of Appeal accepted another portion of the appeal by revoking Axiom Mining’s current license for the Isabel site.

Read more

Indonesia hopes four new smelters complete in 2016 -mining official (Reuters U.S. – March 16, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

Indonesia hopes four new smelters will be completed in 2016, a mining ministry official said on Wednesday, as low commodity prices continue to create financial problems for the mining industry and shrink government returns.

Indonesia banned metal ore shipments in early 2014 to encourage firms to build smelters and shift exports from raw materials to higher-value finished metals. But the ban cost the country, the world’s top nickel ore exporter at the time and a major supplier of bauxite, billions of dollars in lost revenue.

Dozens of smelter projects have been delayed, many of them in nickel, as a result of the current downturn in commodity prices, and only five nickel smelters of a targeted 12 were completed last year.

Read more

Output cuts halt nickel price fall, more mine closures needed – by Louise Heavens (Reuters U.S. – March 16, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON – Nickel’s freefall may have halted as output cuts move the chronically oversupplied market towards deficit, but prices are unlikely to recover sharply unless more loss-making mines close.

Prices for the metal used to make stainless steel have crashed more than 40 percent since the start of 2015 on rising stockpiles and weak Chinese demand, leaving around 70 percent of producers losing money, according to consultants at CRU Group.

But cutbacks, at a time when demand is steadying, should boost benchmark prices on the London Metal Exchange, which recently hit 13-year lows at $7,550 a tonne. It is now around $8,525.

Read more

End of Eden? Mining push in Philippines ends isolation of islanders – by Ralph Jennings (Christian Science Monitor – March 14, 2016)

http://www.csmonitor.com/

PUERTO GALERA, PHILIPPINES — A path cut through a forest hillside outside this resort town is no ordinary road. It will soon connect the modern world to an indigenous tribal group that until now has lived mostly in pre-modern isolation.

Does this road represent the end of a lifestyle and of farming and food sources that villagers have relied on for millennia?

Ask Gabayno Uybad. He grew up in a typical indigenous Mangyan village on Mindoro Island, far from the developed coastline. The community, where people farm both for themselves and the collective, lies seven miles from a modern highway.

Read more

Clive Palmer makes demands before July restart for Queensland Nickel refinery – by Cameron Atfield (Sydney Morning Herald – March 14, 2016)

http://www.smh.com.au/

Clive Palmer’s Townsville nickel refinery looks set to close for four months, and might never reopen if the mining magnate’s own conditions are not met.

Mr Palmer, the Federal Member for Fairfax, has detailed five demands he said must be met in order to save his embattled Queensland Nickel refinery.

Queensland Nickel Sales, a company set up last week to run the Yabulu refinery, wrote to the Queensland government to outline its five requirements for operations at the refinery to recommence from July.

Mr Palmer said the requirements were:

  • That QNS obtain the relevant government approvals.

    Read more