Recording date: 22nd August 2024
Nickel prices bounced around $16-$16,500 for the last 2 weeks – popped up yesterday to $16,800, and flirted with $17,000.
Ore prices have marched higher and increased each of the last 2 weeks – 1.5% Philippine ore key benchmark has climbed by $6/tonne or 12.5% to $54/tonne – flows right through to the cost floor. This is even with demand not quite as strong as we expected at the start of the year as Chinese economy weakness and lithium weakness slowing restocking in the EV segment (still good 8% y-o-y but not at double-digit rates).
As of June, Indonesia now imports 3% of its global ore supply from the Philippines (some good charts from Macquarie). This underscores the theme that Indonesia doesn’t have an unlimited supply of ore and is facing real ore grade is seen high-grading three ways: nickel grade, Fe/Ni ratio, and slag chemistry. Given that weakness, NPI and stainless prices haven’t followed suit with ore prices. Price compression is still happening as NPI discounts narrowed again and sulphate at a small discount.
A little bit of news, but generally, it is a quiet summer:
Electra Battery Metals - $US20 million from DOD – restarting and expanding existing cobalt refinery. They will be processing material from the Congo into finished cobalt products - which underscores the government’s focus on this stage of processing – one of the key drivers as to why Canada Nickel is setting up a downstream business.
Canada Nickel - We continued with good regional exploration news: Best Reid interval to date – 661m of 0.29% nickel, including 100m of 0.42% nickel and 40m of 0.51% nickel in REI-24-35; all eight holes targeting the Reid central core intersected core lengths greater than 620m, with average grades of 0.21% to 0.29%.
SPC Nickel released more in-fill holes from West Graham, with some good, shallow intervals - Hole WG-24-092 intersected 1.15 per cent nickel and 0.29 per cent copper over 12.0 metres from 15m to 27m. This interval is part of a wider interval that returned 0.75 per cent nickel and 0.24 per cent copper over 34.85 metres from 1.15 to 36.0 metres.
Power Nickel (may be renamed to Power Copper-PGM) last few holes from winter program – some more good copper-PGM intervals N-24-060 returned: 10.39 metres (m) of 0.19 gram per tonne (g/t) gold (Au), 14.17 g/t silver (Ag), 2.12 per cent copper (Cu), 2.08 g/t palladium (Pd), 0.4 g/t platinum (Pt) and 0.14 per cent nickel (Ni); Including 4.05 m of 0.31 g/t Au, 18.64 g/t Ag, 2.75 per cent Cu, 2.81 g/t Pd, 0.75 g/t Pt and 0.14 per cent Ni; With 1.7 m of 0.58 g/t Au, 38.61 g/t Ag, 5.95 per cent Cu, 4.54 g/t Pd, 0.95 g/t Pt and 0.19 per cent Ni; PN-24-050 returned 5.45 m of 0.13 g/t Au, 4.2 g/t Ag, 0.61 per cent Cu, 1.32 g/t Pd, 0.52 g/t Pt and 0.11 per cent Ni; Including 2.6 m of 0.17 g/t Au, 7.3 g/t Ag, 0.81 per cent Cu, 2.38 g/t Pd, 0.72 g/t Pt and 0.05 per cent Ni; And 1.25 m of 0.18 g/t Au, 2.72 g/t Ag, 0.95 per cent Cu, 0.76 g/t Pd, 0.76 g/t Pt and 0.29 per cent Ni.
Premium Nickel initial 43-101 resource (an increase from historic resource) Selebi Main Deposit - Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate of 18.89 million tonnes at 3.51% CuEq or 1.70% NiEq. Contained metal Inferred - 165,000 tonnes nickel and 319,000 tonnes copper. Selebi North Deposit - Indicated Mineral Resource Estimate of 3.00 million tonnes at 2.92% CuEq or 1.42% NiEq. Contained metal Indicated - 29,000 tonnes nickel and 27,000 tonnes copper. Inferred Mineral Resource Estimate of 5.83 million tonnes at 3.11% CuEq or 1.51% NiEq. Contained metal Inferred - 62,000 tonnes nickel and 52,000 tonnes copper. — Learn more: https://cruxinvestor.com/categories/commodities/nickel Sign up for Crux Investor: https://cruxinvestor.com
