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Nickel Laterites

Australia gives nickel a quick fix, but surgery of global industry needed – by Clyde Russell (Reuters – February 19, 2024)

https://www.reuters.com/

LAUNCESTON, Australia, Feb 19 (Reuters) – Australia is throwing a lifeline to its under pressure nickel mining sector, but the solution on offer is more of a band aid than the needed major surgery, the carving of the global nickel industry into green and dirty.

Resources Minister Madeleine King placed nickel on the critical minerals list, a move that allows the industry to access some of the A$4 billion ($2.7 billion) of federal government funding aimed at promoting minerals vital to energy transition.

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‘Time for courageous, big-thinking policy’, says nickel miner – by Brad Thompson (Australian Financial Review – February 17, 2024)

https://www.afr.com/

Andrew Forrest-owned nickel miner Wyloo says “courageous, big-thinking policy” is needed to save the industry in Australia. Wyloo is pushing hard for big tax breaks and other action beyond belated relief measures announced by the Albanese and WA governments on Friday.

Perth-headquartered Wyloo and other big players in nickel and lithium are maintaining calls for a production tax credit of at least 10 per cent to reduce costs and spur investment in downstream processing of battery and strategically important minerals.

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Indonesia Has Grand Ambitions for Its Nickel Industry – by Christina Lu (Foreign Policy – February 13, 2024)

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As the country heads to the polls this week, the future of Jakarta’s bid is set to come into sharper focus.

Long before the energy transition gained momentum around the world, nickel powerhouse Indonesia dreamed of harnessing its mineral riches to transform its economy and wield greater leverage in the international marketplace.

The global shift away from fossil fuels and the growing demand for the critical minerals powering green technology have turbocharged Jakarta’s ambitions. Nickel is a key component in electric vehicle batteries, yet few countries can claim as big of a stake over the global nickel sector as Indonesia, which is home to some of the world’s biggest nickel reserves and mined half of the global supply in 2022.

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BHP ramps up cost-cutting as axe hangs over thousands of nickel jobs – by Brad Thompson (Australian Financial Review – February 11, 2024)

https://www.afr.com/

BHP has told suppliers and workers at its West Australian nickel operations that it needs to cut costs for the business to have any chance of surviving the nickel rout that has claimed mines run by IGO and Andrew Forrest’s Wyloo.

Chief executive Mike Henry and the BHP board face tough calls on Nickel West amid estimates the business is losing up to $50 million a month at current nickel prices. Nickel miners, including Nickel West boss Jessica Farrell, met WA Premier Roger Cook on Friday as part of work by his government to refresh its critical minerals strategy in light of the downturn in nickel, lithium and other green metals.

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Glencore to Sell Stake in Struggling New Caledonia Nickel Mines – by Eddie Spence and Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – February 12, 2024)

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/

(Bloomberg) — Glencore Plc plans to sell its stake in a nickel mine and a processing plant on the islands of New Caledonia following a dramatic slump in prices.

The world’s top commodity trader will seek to sell its 49% stake in Koniambo Nickel SAS, according to a statement from KNS. The company would begin “without delay” to suspend operations at its ferronickel plant while a new investor is found.

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Australia to propose green mining standards amid slump in EV metals – by Ryohtaroh Satch (Nikkei Asia – February 7, 2024)

https://asia.nikkei.com/

Resources minister cites need to protect industry as Asian competition grows

TOKYO — Australia will propose setting up international standards for ethical and environmentally friendly mining in an attempt to command higher prices for its minerals amid a sluggish market and competition from countries like Indonesia.

“It’s a long-term project, but there’s no doubt there’s something I’ll be raising,” Minister for Resources Madeleine King told Nikkei Asia while visiting Tokyo last week. King said she will propose the idea at the PDAC 2024 Convention, a mineral industry trade event, in Canada in March.

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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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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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