Twitter

Nickel

China Nickel Trade Shifts as Ore Imports Drop, Ferronickel Rises (Bloomberg News – August 24, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

China’s imports of nickel ore and refined metal dropped in July, while overseas purchases of an intermediate form of the raw material surged, signalling the shifting mix of shipments into the world’s top stainless-steel producer.

Inbound shipments of ore were 3.29 million metric tons, down 34 percent from about 5 million tons a year earlier, while imports of refined metal dropped 41 percent to 27,129 tons, according to Chinese customs data Wednesday. Overseas purchases of ferronickel jumped 56 percent to 92,240 tons, the second-highest on record, as Indonesian shipments rose more than fivefold.

Refined nickel in London has advanced 16 percent this year amid speculation a mining clampdown in the Philippines will encourage Chinese buyers to seek other forms of the metal as ore shipments from the top producer decline.

Read more

Lone Norwegian mayor accuses Russian oligarch of fouling the Arctic: When will Oslo follow? – by Anna Kireeva (Bellona.org – August 23, 2016)

http://bellona.org/

KIRKENES, Norway – Following a gathering of politicians and citizens in this town earlier this month, calls from its mayor to forbid travel to a Russian oligarch for his hand in polluting Northern Norway have intensified.

Norilsk Nickel, produces a third of the world’s nickel with facilities on the Kola Peninsula, which Norwegian and other scientists have said are responsible for extremely high concentrations of sulfur dioxide on their side of the border, something Rosprirodnadzor, Russia’s official government environmental watchdog has long denied.

But Rune Rafaelsen, mayor of Kirkenes told Bellona in an interview that he’s tired of watching as nothing is done to solve the 26-year-old crisis, and is appealing to Vidar Helgesen, Norway’s Minister of Climate and the Environment to hit Norilsk Nickel where it hurts.

Read more

Top Chinese Nickel Producer Says Bull Market Just Beginning – by Alfred Cang (Bloomberg News – August 17, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Nickel’s rally is only just getting started, making the metal an attractive bet for investors, according to Jinchuan Group, China’s biggest producer of the refined metal.

Tightening global supplies because of a mining clampdown in the Philippines and rising demand from the stainless steel industry in China will push prices higher even after they climbed 35 percent from February lows, Chairman Yang Zhiqiang wrote in a statement on the company’s website. China consumes about half of the world’s supply and the Philippines produces a fifth of it.

“Nickel’s advance is just the beginning of a long bull run, with current prices still around multi-year lows, making the metal a promising investment,” Yang wrote.

Read more

Northern exposure: Life in Norilsk, Russia’s most polluted city – by Andrei Iskrov (Russia Beyond the Headlines – August 16, 2016)

https://rbth.com/

Almost completely shut off from the outside world, the city of Norilsk in northern Siberia is a surreal place dominated by the world’s largest nickel plant. Pollution from the enterprise and the harsh climate make life hard for those who work here, but there is also a pride in surviving in such an inhospitable environment.

In the northern part of Siberia’s vast Krasnoyarsk Territory, not far from the Arctic Ocean, lies the city of Norilsk. It is often referred to using superlatives – the northernmost city in the world with more than 100,000 inhabitants, the most polluted city in Russia, one of the coldest cities in the world, and the home of the world’s most northern railway.

Snowdrifts on the streets of Norilsk may not melt until the following winter, the numbers on buildings are two meters big so that they can be seen during a blizzard and real summer here usually lasts for only one week. Temperatures in the city frequently drop to -50 degrees Celsius (-58 degrees Fahrenheit) and below in winter.

Read more

NEWS RELEASE: Newly Appointed CEO Mr. Chen Dexin Aims at Building Jinchuan into a World-Class Mining Company

HONG KONG, Aug 16, 2016 – (ACN Newswire) – Jinchuan Group International Resources Co. Ltd (the “Company”, together with its subsidiaries, collectively referred to as the “Group” or “Jinchuan International”, SEHK: 2362) is pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Chen Dexin as Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”) of the Company, effective 15 June 2016. Mr. Chen is a seasoned executive appointed out of his extensive mining industry experience. He aims at building Jinchuan International into a world-class mining company.

Mr. Chen joined Jinchuan Group Co., Ltd (“Jinchuan Group”), the controlling shareholder of Jinchuan International, following graduation and has long been responsible for frontline mining technology and management. He was promoted to General Manager of the No. 2 Jinchuan Mine (an underground mine), and in 2010 to Vice President, in charge of mine resources of Jinchuan Group.

During this period, Mr. Chen also performed as Chairman of the Board and Acting Chief Executive Officer of Metorex (Proprietary) Ltd (“Metorex”), a subsidiary of Jinchuan International, and as Deputy Chairman and Non-Executive Director of Wesizwe Platinum Ltd (“Wesizwe”), a company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in the Republic of South Africa.

Read more

UBS Makes a Bugle Call for Nickel Bulls on Crackdown, Demand (Bloomberg News – August 15, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Rising demand, deficits and a crackdown in the Philippines are combining to make nickel one of its most-preferred commodities, according to UBS Group AG, which said the full impact of mine shutdowns in the Southeast Asia nation may be felt only next year when exports fail to ramp up as usual.

The government’s audit of standards in the mining sector is a front-of-mind risk that’s already shut down about 2 percent of world supply, analysts including Daniel Morgan wrote in a note. Ore shipments from the top supplier could fall to 314,000 metric tons next year from 410,000 tons last year, it said.

Nickel has been the best-performing base metal in the second half, rallying to its highest level in a year Aug. 10, on speculation that the Philippine crackdown led by President Rodrigo Duterte will crimp supplies. Prices have also been supported as rising stainless-steel output boosts consumption, the UBS analysts said in the Aug. 12 report.

Read more

The Key Challenge To Tesla’s Growth – by Michael McDonald (Oil Price.com – August 12, 2016)

http://oilprice.com/

Tesla’s increasingly ambitious plans to rule not only the electric vehicle space but also the solar energy space are likely to become more difficult to achieve over the next year. It has been widely reported in recent weeks that Tesla’s gigafactory is facing some challenges in becoming fully operational.

What is perhaps less well understood is the magnitude of the supply chain challenges that will face Tesla and its gigafactory. Tesla’s goal is to produce 500,000 vehicles a year by 2018. The company has accelerated its production time table in large part due to the enormous amount of demand the company saw for its Model 3 sedan.

The firm announced almost 375,000 preorders for the vehicle. To fulfill this demand plus new demand that the company will likely see for its products over the next couple of years, Tesla needs to produce more lithium ion batteries in 2018 than the entire world produced in 2013. That’s not an impossible feat given the size of the gigafactory, but it is challenging.

Read more

The Kola Mining and Metallurgy Combine: Norwegian politicians and citizens call Norilsk Nickel ‘dirtiest industry in the Arctic’ – by Anna Kireeva (Bellona.org – August 11, 2016)

http://bellona.org/

KIRKENES, Norway – Residents of this Norwegian-Russian border town have long suffered enormous sulfur dioxide emissions from Russian industry, and say they’re fed up with weak reactions from their own politicians to the two-decade old problem.

An area event last week gathered hundreds of residents of the small town in highlighting their worries over the heavy metal emissions wafting in from the Russian Kola Peninsula’s Kola Mining and Metallurgy Company’s industrial complex towns, and requested their own local politicians break deadlocked talks between Oslo and Moscow to improve the situation.

The Kola company is spread out across Northwest Russia in three of the dirtiest industrial towns in the country: Nikel, Zapolyarny and Monchegorsk. The Kirkenes event highlighted the recent publication of a Norwegian-authored book entitled Stop the Soviet Death Clouds, the name of the eponymous movement that was sparked in the early 1990s to fight trans-border pollution from the newly disbanded Soviet Union.

Read more

Op-Docs: My Beautiful, Deadly City – by Victoria Fiore (New York Times – August 9, 2016)

http://www.nytimes.com/

Not many people have heard of Norilsk, an industrial cityin an isolated part of Arctic Russia. No roads or trains lead there; internet is severely limited; and it is it closed to foreigners.

Getting there, I would find out, is very difficult. Yet despite its obscurity, Norilsk has one of the largest mining and metallurgical complexes in the world and produces most of the earth’s palladium, an essential mineral in electronics and automobiles. Most of us probably have a bit of Norilsk in our pockets, bags or homes.

Having this connection to such an alien place intrigued me; Norilsk was the most important city I’d never heard of.

Read more

Glencore guiding higher ferrochrome, nickel output – by Martin Creamer (MiningWeekly.com – August 11, 2016)

http://www.miningweekly.com/page/americas-home

JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Diversified mining and marketing company Glencore on Thursday guided higher 2016 ferrochrome and nickel production – the only two of its wide range of commodities that it expects to produce at levels higher than in 2015.

Reporting lower half-year production of copper, zinc, lead, coal and oil than in the first six months of 2015, the London-, Hong Kong- and Johannesburg-listed company headed by CEO Ivan Glasenberg put this year’s expected full-year ferrochrome production at 1 575 000 t – up on the 1 462 000 t of 2015.

In the six months to June 30, Glencore’s attributable share of ferrochrome production of 762 000 t was in line with last year’s first-half output. The company is also guiding 2016 nickel output of 116 000 t, up on the 96 000 t of last year.

Read more

Glencore reveals tax payout – by Staff (Sudbury Star – July 16, 2016)

http://www.thesudburystar.com/

Glencore paid the government of Canada $5.65 million US in taxes last year for its Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations. The figure is contained in a report released by the miner called Glencore: Payments to Government 2015.

Glencore is one of the world’s largest global diversified natural resource companies, and a major producer and trader of more than 90 commodities, it says on its website. In Sudbury, Glencore operates two underground nickel-copper mines: Nickel Rim South, which the company says is Sudbury’s largest mining operation, and Fraser Mine.

Its Strathcona concentrator receives ore from those two mines and from third-party custom feed ores, and produces two concentrate streams, a nickel-copper concentrate that goes to the Sudbury smelter and a copper concentrate that goes to Glencore Copper for smelting and refining.

Read more

Metals rebound restores some luster to lowly zinc and nickel – by Peter Koven(Financial Post – July 15, 2016)

http://business.financialpost.com/

After many months in the gutter, two of the world’s least-loved metals are enjoying an honest-to-goodness turnaround.

Zinc and nickel are both soaring this summer after recovering from shocking depths early in the year. Zinc touched US$1.00 a pound on Thursday for the first time since mid-2015, while nickel jumped to a nine-month high of US$4.73 a pound. Zinc is up 48 per cent from its January low, and nickel is up 38 per cent in the same period.

These moves were a long time coming. For the past two years, experts have been warning of major supply-side problems in these markets and predicting that rallies were inevitable. It took a while for them to materialize, in part because of high inventories. And now that they are finally here, there is debate about whether they are sustainable.

Read more

A Loss For China And A Win For Russia In The Philippines – by Tim Treadgold (Forbes Magazine – July 14, 2016)

http://www.forbes.com/

Russia is a likely winner from changing government policy in the Philippines just as the South East Asian country emerges as a thorn in the side of China.

The problem between China and the Philippines is well understood and relates to disputed territorial claims by China to a vast area of the South China Sea that is close to other countries, including the Philippines, Vietnam and Malaysia.

Earlier this week an international disputes court in the Netherlands found against China and in favor of a case taken by the Philippines against the Chinese claims which are based on ancient history and modern “island building”.

Read more

Scant short term impact seen on nickel from Philippine mine crackdown – by Manolo Serapio Jr and Eric Onstad (Reuters U.S. – July 13, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

MANILA/LONDON, July 13 An environmental crackdown on Philippine mines, which helped drive nickel prices to eight-month highs, is likely to have only a muted impact on exports to China in the short term because the biggest mines have met guidelines, experts said.

The Philippines is the biggest exporter to top metals consumer China of nickel ore, used to make stainless steel. A smattering of smaller mines are likely to be affected in coming months and new mines will probably face tough going in the future, but the review of the mining sector is not likely to result in a quick drop in shipments.

“The Chinese think the Philippines will continue exporting ore to China and only some small mines will be affected. They’re not worried about the situation at the moment,” said Peter Peng, analyst at CRU consultancy in Beijing.

Read more

Nickel at 9-month high on Philippine environmental fears – by Neil Hume (Financial Times – July 12, 2016)

https://next.ft.com/

Nickel has powered to its highest level since October 2015 as investors become increasingly concerned about an environmental crackdown in the Philippines. The Philippines has emerged as the top supplier of nickel ore to China since Indonesia banned exports of unprocessed raw materials in 2014, writes Neil Hume.

It was the largest producer of mined nickel globally last year, accounting for 465,000 tonnes, or 22 per cent of global output, and 97 per cent of total ore imported in China, according to Standard Chartered. Filipino is used by Chinese mills to produce nickel pig iron, a cheap alternative to refined nickel.

Those supplies could now be in danger after the new president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte ordered a review of the country’s mining industry.

Read more