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Nickel

Electrum fund boosts stake in Nickel Creek Platinum – by Carl A. Williams (Northern Miner – June 9, 2020)

https://www.northernminer.com/

The Electrum Strategic Opportunities Fund has increased its interest in Nickel Creek Platinum (TSX: NPC; US-OTC: NCPCF) to 33.88% following the closure of the second tranche of a private placement.

The mining-focussed private equity fund based in New York is part of the Electrum Group founded by billionaire Thomas Kaplan.

The fund purchased nearly 21 million units at a price of 5¢ per unit, raising $1.1 million of Nickel Creek’s total equity raise of $1.53 million.

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Nickel market to evolve as EVs, role-players and projects change – by Donna Slater (MiningWeekly.com – June 5, 2020)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

The international refined nickel production and trade market will evolve in the coming decade as China’s large nickel deficit, driven by the electric vehicle (EV) success story, and Russia’s slowly falling nickel surplus, driven by a thin project pipeline, open opportunities for other producers, says financial risk management, solutions and insights company Fitch Solutions Country Risk and Industry Research (Fitch).

The company further notes that Indonesia will be one of the outperformers over the coming years, as it is well positioned to service Chinese demand owing to its close geographical location and rising domestic refined nickel production capacity.

In addition, rising nickel production in Japan over the coming years will sustain its growth trend in unwrought nickel exports to top nickel consumers internationally, while the UK and Norway will also have an opportunity to increase production as Europe’s falling imports from Russia enable other top European producers to fill the gap.

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Nickel Rush Restarts As Steel And Battery Demand Rises – by Tim Treadgold (Forbes Magazine – June 4, 2020)

https://www.forbes.com/

China’s rapid exit from its Covid-19 lockdown has triggered the restart of a rush for nickel, an old-fashioned metal mainly used in making stainless steel, but also a key ingredient in the batteries of electric vehicles.

While not yet attracting the eye of investors in the same way iron ore has with its 30% rise to $100 a ton there has been a strong flow of deals and a hint of stockpiling ahead of a possible nickel shortage.

Over the past two months the price of nickel has risen by 15%, admittedly off a pandemic low of $5 a pound to $5.75, potentially heading back to $8/lb, where it was last October.

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Huge Arctic Fuel Spill May Have Been Triggered by Climate Change – by Yuliya Fedorinova (Bloomberg News – June 4, 2020)

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/

Russia declared a federal state of emergency in part of Siberia after a massive fuel spill that MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC said could have been caused by melting permafrost.

The May 29 incident, in which 20,000 tons of diesel leaked from a reservoir owned by Nornickel, may revive concerns about the effects of climate change on infrastructure in the Arctic. Scientists have warned for years that thawing of once permanently frozen ground covering more than half of Russia is threatening the stability of buildings and pipelines.

Greenpeace said the accident was the largest ever in the Arctic region, and likened it to the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska in 1989. The cause of the spill hasn’t been determined, but Nornickel First Vice President Sergey Dyachenko said on Thursday it could be the result of damage from melting permafrost. The rate of warming in the Arctic is twice as fast as the rest of the world.

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Vale confirms Mark Travers as executive director of base metals – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – June 1, 2020)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Mark Travers has been confirmed as Vale’s executive director of base metals. Travers has held the position on an interim basis since March 2019 after the resignation of CEO Fábio Schvartsman and three of the company’s senior executives.

The resignations were prompted by the collapse of a tailings dam in Brazil that killed 186 people.

“I am committed to leading the base metals’ business transformation to create a bright future on the strengths of our ongoing efforts to become a safe, reliable and sustainable operator,” Travers said in a statement from Vale.

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Nornickel, Murmansk Region present Pechengsky District’s development program (Tass.com – May 2020)

https://tass.com/

MURMANSK, May 26. /TASS/. The Murmansk Region’s government and the Norilsk Nickel Company (Nornickel) on May 20 presented a concept for development of the Pechengsky District. Nornickel’s Director of the Social Policies Department Svetlana Ivchenko told reporters the parties would also implement in the region a program to develop sustainable economy after Kola MMC closed down its melting shop.

The Kola MMC’s melting shop is the key business in the Nickel town, where about 11,000 live. Along with supporting divisions, the shop employs about 600 people. Their jobs will be cut gradually, and the shop will be closed by 2021. Nornickel and the regional authorities have been working on a program to settle the employment issue in the town.

“Our next step is to develop a program for the district’s social and economic development, which will be a part of the Murmansk region’s program,” she said. “The program will outline the initiatives, projects and actions. <…> We have been working on the program’s all directions.”

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Canada Nickel discovers PGM zones at Crawford – by Carl A. Williams (Northern Miner – May 21, 2020)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Canada Nickel Company (TSXV: CNC) has discovered two new palladium-platinum zones and extended nickel mineralization at its wholly owned Crawford nickel-cobalt project located in the Timmins-Cochrane mining camp, 40 km north of Timmins, Ontario.

Discovery holes drilled in the East zone at the property have doubled the strike length of the nickel mineralization, while partial assays from a third hole have extended the PGM zone on the Main zone, the company reports.

“Crawford just keeps getting bigger and better as we move forward,” Mark Selby, the company’s chairman and CEO, said in an interview. “It’s pretty amazing that after we’ve already drilled off the eleventh largest nickel-sulphide resource globally, that with our first step-out holes from this anomaly we get the best nickel intersection and best palladium-platinum intersection to date.”

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Eurobattery to buy Finland battery metals project – by Donna Slater (MiningWeekly.com – May 13, 2020)

https://m.miningweekly.com/

The option under the investment and shareholders agreement is linked to an obligation to provide successive cash financing for investments in the Hautalampi project.

Eurobattery will pay about €8.6-million over 48 months for the VHOy shares and the option premium, as well as the cash financing component.

The Hautalampi project is located at the same site as the Keretti (Outokumpu) copper mine, which operated during 1912 to 1989. The Hautalampi nickel/cobalt/copper orebody is located parallel to, and above, the exploited copper deposit. Existing surface and underground infrastructure provide significant location advantages in what is already a Tier 1 mining jurisdiction.

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OPINION: Nickel investing comes with a heavy price – by John Dizard (Financial Times – May 15, 2020)

https://www.ft.com/

Financial gloomsters have been in much better spirits lately. While the world’s health and economy are in deep trouble, contrarians can now prove they were right all along.

Momentary self-satisfaction at the extent of predicted ruins, though, must be succeeded by some useful observations, such as, what do we do next? A coherent macro view is a start, but even as the financial system teeters towards destructive deflation, it may be possible to identify a few assets, or industries, where real prices and real returns might increase. We will need the money.

I have thought for some time that it would be impossible to shift the auto industry to an electric vehicle future without moving quickly to increase metals production in an environmentally, financially and socially sustainable way.

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What are Joe Biden’s views on two of the most controversial environmental projects in Minnesota? – by Walker Orenstein and Gabe Schneider (MinnPost – May 11, 2020)

https://www.minnpost.com/

In late April, former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign held a virtual event with Minnesota supporters to promote the Democrat’s plans to address climate change and a clean environment.

But while U.S. Sen. Tina Smith and other Biden surrogates talked about carbon-free energy, clean water, agriculture and electric cars, they did not touch on perhaps the two most controversial environmental issues in the state: copper-nickel mining in Northern Minnesota and the proposed Line 3 oil pipeline.

Many of the major Democratic candidates in the presidential race said they would oppose the Line 3 project, the proposed Twin Metals mine near Ely, or both if elected in the fall of 2020. Those stances heartened the environmentalist wing of the party and roiled trade unions and rural DFLers.

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Base metals, gold exploration kicks into high gear, north of Timmins – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – May 6, 2020)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

A junior mining startup company has raised more than $4.4 million to go exploring for base metals on its property near Timmins.

Growing investor interest in the fledgling exploration outfit and its Crawford nickel-cobalt sulphide property, 40 kilometres north of the city, prompted Canada Nickel Company to upsize its flow-through share financing offering last month.

Helmed by renowned nickel developer Mark Selby, Canada Nickel is a spinoff of Noble Mineral Exploration, the latter being the owners of a sizeable swath of land, next to the Kidd Creek Mine Complex.

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Rockcliff makes new Nickel-PGE discovery at [Flin Flon, Manitoba] Tower property (Resource World – May 6, 2020)

https://resourceworld.com/

Rockcliff Metals Corp. [RCLF-CSE; RO0-FSE; A2H60G-WKLN] has made a new high-grade nickel-PGE (platinum group element) discovery on its 100%-owned Tower property in the Snow Lake area of central Manitoba. This new discovery, termed the TGR nickel-PGE prospect, has returned significant assay results.

TGR is located only 600 metres south of the company’s high-grade, copper-rich Tower deposit. The TGR mineralization was discovered in a previously unexplored area and is associated with ultramafic rocks of the Thompson nickel belt (TNB).

The TNB is a world-class over-300-kilometre-long mining belt with over 60 years of production from high-grade nickel mines with associated copper and cobalt.

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Independent review confirms magmatic nickel/copper/PGM deposit for Kavango – by Marleny Arnoldi (MiningWeekly.com – April 29, 2020)

https://www.miningweekly.com/

London-listed Kavango Resources has published a new independent technical review on the exploration potential of the company’s Kalahari Suture Zone (KSZ) project, in Botswana.

Kavango is searching for “Norilsk-style” deposits in the KSZ, which the technical review has confirmed the presence of.

The review, completed by Dr David Holwell using a mineral systems approach, confirms the presence of ten key geological features, which are also present in world-class magmatic sulphide copper, nickel and platinum group metal (PGM) deposits at Norilsk, in Siberia; Voisey’s Bay, Thomson Nickel Belt and Raglan, in Canada; and Jinchuan, in China.

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Sudbury: Expect more earthquakes as mines dig deeper, Vale says – by Casey Stranges (CBC News Sudbury – April 27, 2020)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

Mining giant Vale says seismic activity around its Sudbury-area mines is likely linked to its deep drilling operations, and it’s a possibility that more incidents will follow.

Natural Resources Canada recorded two earthquakes last week. A 3.6 MN (magnitude) tremor hit Creighton Mine Thursday morning, and a 3.0 MN quake forced Garson Mine to stop operations Friday night and all day Saturday.

According to Natural Resources Canada’s website, it’s unlikely that any quake that registers below 5 MN would cause damage above ground, though tremors were felt as far away as Lively.

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Nickel Exploration and Mining – outlook and update – by Kathrine Moore (Resource World – April 28, 2020)

https://resourceworld.com/

NICKEL IS A BASE METAL with many uses; from coins to skyscrapers it is part of our daily life, including the kitchen sink. But not all nickel is equal. Different types of nickel are used for different purposes. Mark Jarvis, CEO of Giga Metals, spoke to Resource World about the nickel industry, nickel demand and types of nickel.

According to Jarvis, 70% of all nickel produced is used to feed stainless-steel mills. Most of that nickel is class 2 nickel, including nickel pig iron, an iron nickel alloy, a type of low-grade ferro-nickel. A small amount of class 1 or pure nickel, on average 5% of the nickel units, is necessary for steel making,

All other uses of nickel require class 1 nickel, including storage batteries and batteries that power electric vehicles. Jarvis explained that class 1 nickel is nickel that can be economically upgraded to 99.9% nickel or better.

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