strong nickel sales, page-5

On 23 Sept 2010 an analyst wrote;

We have previously recommended WSA as “Jubilee mark 2”.
Interestingly, many of the high net worth investors who made a bucket load in JBM are now invested in WSA as their high grade nickel sulphide producer.
The similarities are striking in terms of grade and market scepticism, yet there’s every chance WSA is a better story than JBM ever was.

Compared to WSA ,today we are only 25% in price of JBM’s, at a similar stage of development.
MD Julian Hanna and Dan Lougher, who is their operations boss, do a very good job telling what is a pretty simple story.
The thing that struck me is how much WSA has transformed from smaller explorer/developer over the years to a genuine large scale nickel producer with big growth ahead.

People forget WSA at 25ktpa of production is now producing at double the rate Jubilee Mines was when Xstrata paid $3b for it a few years ago at the top of the nickel price.

People also forget WSA are now Australia’s second largest nickel producer after BHP Billiton.

The main game in WSA is about the nickel smelters globally. One of the great scrambles is coming re global nickel concentrate in the next few years as the there is simply no growth in the nickel sulphide production needed to keep these smelters running at full capacity.

Remember, if your smelter isn’t running at full capacity you aren’t making as much profit.

This is all about capacity utilisation at the smelters and that is why there is going to be a fight for quality concentrate in coming years which will include the smelters buying the independent producers.