Also, nickel sulphate gets a 20% premium on the nickel price for pure, battery grade nickel sulphate, Adding a high grade nickel sulphate feed could bypass or severely lessen processing overheads upstream at the refinery or even bypass steps. IMO
"The combined integration of upstream and downstream in the nickel battery sector is attributable to higher margins.“If you produce intermediate products – MHP (mixed hydroxide precipitate) – historically you’ll be given 80% of the LME price for the products. If you produce nickel sulfate, you’ll get a premium of $2,000-3,000 per tonne over the LME nickel price, so that’s a premium of 20% based on the LME nickel price,” Macquarie Capital senior commodities consultant Jim Lennon said at the panel.“So if you’re a miner, you’ll get 80% of the price versus 120%, clearly there’s a huge incentive to go all the way through to [producing] nickel sulfate,” Lennon said."
