31 Mar 2022Justin Werner is the CEO of Nickel Mines Limited,...

31 Mar 2022

Justin Werner is the CEO of Nickel Mines Limited, which isan Australian company. Justin lives in Bali and the company’s operations areall in Sulawesi in Indonesia, it’s got an office in Sydney and an office inJakarta but it’s basically a Sulawesi nickel operation. It started off as amine in Sulawesi and now it’s primarily a processor of nickel from all overIndonesia, turning it into nickel pig iron for stainless steel and obviouslystarting to look at ways of also turning it into nickel matte for car batteriesbecause nickel is one of the rising battery minerals.

Obviously, the nickel market has been througha bit of turbulence lately, reaching $100,000 because of a short position by aChinese company called Tsingshan, which happens to be Nickel Mines’ largestshareholder and also their partner and they, in fact, have a contract to buyall of Nickel Mines’ nickel pig iron output. And so, Nickel Mines Limited iswell and truly in bed with Tsingshan which has lost billions of dollars in itsshort position in the nickel market. So, naturally, the question is, how isTsingshan going? Are they in strife? The answer, is apparently they’re okaybecause they’re really big and the losses for their short position aren’t goingto kill them.

So, apparently, all is well and they haven’tclosed out all of their short position yet, they’ve still got a fair bit to go,in fact. Anyway, we’ll see how that goes, but Nickel Mines is a veryinteresting business, producing, as I said, nickel pig iron for stainless steeland now increasingly looking at nickel for the car battery market.

So, hereis Justin Werner, the CEO of Nickel Mines Limited