Nickel rose to its highest level in more than a decade on Monday morning. London Metal Exchange (LME) three-month nickel has broken through January’s high of $24,435 per tonne to reach $24,610, a level last traded in 2011.
Time-spreads remain in the grip of a ferocious squeeze, the cash premium closing last week valued at $465 per tonne. The huge incentive for LME delivery has drawn some metal into exchange warehouses but not enough to halt the running downtrend.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/
Limestone quarry project also has potential to net $450M for Norway House over 10 years
A new mine in northern Manitoba is expected to create hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in economic spinoff for Indigenous communities, according to the First Nation and the mining company partnering on the project.
Norway House Cree Nation and the Flying Nickel Mining Corporation have signed a memorandum of understanding to move ahead with the Minago Nickel Project, which is being touted as the “greenest nickel mine,” according to a Thursday news release from the partners.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/
Mitsui & Co, a Japanese mineral company, is partnering with Sudbury-based Magna Mining
A $16 million investment from Japanese mineral company Mitsui may lead to a reopening of the Shakespeare Mine near Espanola.
Magna Mining Company, a Sudbury-based junior mining operative, announced earlier in February that it had entered a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Mitsui, which would see the Japanese company’s acquirement of a 10 to 12.5 per cent interest in Magna’s Shakespeare Mine in exchange for between $8 million-$10 million in cash.
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed IGO will partner with Andrew Forrest’s Wyloo Metals to evaluate opportunities for downstream nickel processing in Australia, as Wyloo commits to support IGO’s bid for fellow-listed Western Areas.
The agreement will see IGO and Wyloo Metals conduct a study, funded 70:30 by IGO and Wyloo respectively, to evaluate the technical, commercial and economic feasibility of developing a downstream nickel processing facility based in Australia.
(Bloomberg) — Specialty metals refiner Umicore SA is enjoying record profits as battery materials boom, but the company is racing to avert a slowdown in sales as its cobalt-heavy chemicals fall out of favor with carmakers.
The Brussels-listed company, which has been refining cobalt for more than 100 years, says the burgeoning electric-vehicle industry is switching to high-nickel batteries far faster than expected. Now Umicore is racing to do the same.
(Bloomberg) — In Chinese commodity circles, he’s known as “big shot” — the man who controls the world’s largest nickel producer and isn’t afraid to place big derivatives bets on where prices are headed next.
Now Xiang Guangda has emerged at the center of a market drama that’s fueling some of the largest price swings in years for a key ingredient in the fight against climate change.
https://www.mining-technology.com/
Magna Mining has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Mitsui for a proposed joint venture (JV) arrangement for the Shakespeare mine in Canada.
The MoU allows the two firms to discuss the potential for Mitsui to purchase a stake between 10% and 12.5% in the Shakespeare Ni-Cu-PGM Mine for cash consideration ranging from $8m to $10m. The non-binding MoU, however, is restricted to a 2,590ha area of the over-18,000ha Shakespeare Project.
https://www.thesudburystar.com/
The higher nickel prices of late bode well for the local economy, as bonuses paid to miners typically spill into the community. “That money is spent buying a new dishwasher, or renovating a little area in your home,” said Kevin Boyd, vice-president of Steelworkers Local 6500, which represents about 2,500 workers at Vale.
“When you have that many families getting a couple thousand bucks, or whatever it is, that’s good for local business, absolutely.” A perk also goes to the roughly 800 workers at Glencore, represented by Unifor, when the market is strong.
ELY, Minn. — This northwoods town is quiet and closed up for the winter — no throngs of tourists, the snowy streets largely empty. But there’s a range of emotions running among residents from hope and excitement to angry defiance.
The Biden administration’s decision last week to cancel the leases for the Twin Metals copper-nickel mine marked another dramatic turn in a dispute that has roiled this Iron Range community for decades: Does mining play a role in its future or is it firmly in the past?
The leases, reinstated during the Trump years, would have allowed a Chilean mining conglomerate to dig for copper and nickel near the Boundary Waters wilderness in Minnesota.
The Biden administration said Wednesday that it had canceled two mining leases that would have allowed a copper mine to be built near an area of pristine wilderness in Minnesota.
The Interior Department said it had determined that the leases, held by Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta, were improperly reinstated by the Trump administration in 2019.
Ranking of world’s 20 best selling electric cars and their battery metals show automakers grappling with soaring raw material prices
Sales of battery electric cars and plug-in hybrids are set to double in China this year and reach 5 million units in the world’s top auto market. In Europe, EVs have overtaken sales of diesel-powered vehicles for the first time ever, and now account for one out of every five cars driving off lots.
In North America last year, unit sales were 87% ahead of 2020 and will accelerate again this year, with the launch of all electric pick-up (and perhaps cyber) trucks.
Billionaire Andrew Forrest has raised his stake in takeover target Western Areas in a move that confirms suspicions he will try to complicate IGO Group’s friendly takeover of the nickel miner.
Dr Forrest’s private company Wyloo Metals spent $31.4 million buying Western Areas shares on Friday and Monday at an average price of just under $3.43 per share. That valuation is above the IGO offer price of $3.36 per share, which the Western Areas board supported shortly before Christmas.
One of the selling points for several proposed copper and nickel mines in Minnesota has been that the metal can help power green technology like solar panels, electric vehicles and windmills. But that possibility has always been somewhat hypothetical, or at least hard to quantify for the controversial projects.
PolyMet Mining says metal from its proposed mine near Hoyt Lakes would be a commodity sold on a world market. But while there is high demand for things like EV batteries, there is no guarantee how much, if any, of the product would be used for domestic green technology.
The nickel market is facing its biggest squeeze in more than a decade as buyers are forced to pay huge premiums for immediate supplies with exchange inventories plunging.
Cash contracts on the London Metal Exchange reached a $90-a-ton premium to those expiring a day later, the highest since 2010 and nearing levels seen in 2007 during a historic squeeze. It’s more evidence of acute supply stress in metals, following turmoil in copper and tin markets last year.
Wyloo plans to build nickel mine in next five years, stoking renewed debate about reconciliation with Indigenous peoples
In the last days of December, Australia’s Wyloo Metals Ltd. offered $617 million in cash to buy Noront Resources Ltd., ending a bidding war with fellow Australian mining giant BHP Group, and emerging as the presumptive new owner of the collection of mineral claims in Ontario’s James Bay Lowlands known as the Ring of Fire.
The deal, expected to close in the next few months, leads to at least one major question: What happens next in the Ring of Fire? Cut off from the rest of Ontario, the project would require more than $1 billion of taxpayer investment in roads and infrastructure.
