IGO and Dr Forrest’s private company, Wyloo Metals, have been working together on a study into building downstream nickel processing in Western Australia for 14 months, and on Friday said they would lease 30 hectares of vacant land in the Kwinana industrial precinct south of Perth. The study was widely expected to turn the nickel that IGO and Wyloo will mine into nickel sulphate crystals for battery manufacturers, similar to the product BHP has been selling from Kwinana since it completed Australia’s first nickel sulphate crystal processing plant in 2021.But on Friday, Wyloo and IGO made clear they wanted to go further down the battery value chain than BHP’s Kwinana plant, by “integrating a downstream nickel refinery with a plant producing high-value, nickel dominant precursor cathode active material”.The comments effectively mean the nickel made by the refinery would undergo a further step to be mixed with cobalt and manganese.Those three metals combine to make a precursor powder that can be activated at a later time by the addition of lithium to form the most common chemical mix that goes into the lithium-ion batteries that power most electric vehicles.The plans to make the nickel, manganese and cobalt precursor material at Kwinana are not certain to go ahead and remain subject to a final investment decision by Wyloo and IGO.
COB Price at posting:
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