AUZ - chart, page-2346

Hi monark
You have made a big call there on the Ni lat plants. I do agree with your call on Cobalt ,the world mining industry can and does adapt quickly to demand hence our iron ore mining boom. I believe that cobalt wil retrace a bit but demand is also going up at the same time.
With regards to Nickel you should know as well as me , as we are both invested in MCR , that world nickel sulphides are in decline this is self evident in looking at the two biggest Ni sulphide miners in the world Norilsk and Vale production declines over the last 10-15 yrs. And I'm not including the self imposed reduction that Vale did about 18mths ago due to depressed prices. There has not been a massive sulphide deposit the likes of Kambalda (first found in the 60s), Mt keith/Leinster or Voiseys Bay in decades. Yes we have the smaller players like WSA ,IGO and Panorama and yes our own MCR that hopefully will be digging ore again next year (bring on those drill results) in Aust but these are relatively small players on the world markets and they only supply concentrate not a finished product.
The producers of nickel in Aust that weathered the Ni price in the last few years the best were the refiners of final metal product NiWest (they reduced output), Murrin (surprisingly) and QNI would have kept going if Clive hadn't driven it into the ground and took all the money out of it.
WSA and even IGO Novo would have struggled if they had to ship all of their concentrate overseas for final processing and not have the luxury of blending part of their production thru KNO and sending to Kal smelter.
As to grade , yes the sulphides have higher grade but recovery is much less 92-93% for lats and 82-88% for sulphides plus mining for sulphides is much higher. Yes I know processing for lats costs more.
Where plants like Auz and CLQ will benefit is they are proposing to ship a final product unlike most of the small Ni sulphides who only ship a generally 20% Ni concentrate.
Do not forget a lot of the worlds nickel at the moment is low grade product only suitable for the nickel pig iron market this is mainly out of the Indon and Phil mines mainly.
As the world Ni demand keeps increasing as it is the lats become more important as the sulphides will not be able to keep pace. Even a decline in NPI use , if China ever stops building , will not have a dramatic effect on Ni price as it just means those mines will have to close as it is not suitable for use in stainless steel production or EV batteries.
There is a strong enough market for both high quality lats and sulphides to both produce. This will become more self evident when the LME starts to quote Ni/Co sulphates and Ni/Co metals as different contracts (hopefully next year from press reports).