Pertinent market/industry news/articles, page-62

Thanks for the article JSK176. As you correctly mentioned, China introduced nickel pig iron to cheapen the price of cobalt for stainless steel production, but is now increasing its tariff on this form. Below I've copied and pasted a paragraph from Wikipedia. It says that NPI is too polluting. Another tick for ARL's foresight in aiming to produce the much higher priced nickel sulfate and cobalt sulfate. Its good that ARL, our little Aussie battler, is showing the way in the new battery-metal revolution.

"Nickel pig iron is made of low-grade nickel ore, coking coal, and a mixture of gravel and sand as an aggregate. This mixture is heated in either a blast furnace or an electric arc furnace depending on the desired grade. Impurities are then removed via smelting and sintering processes and the resulting nickel pig iron contains four to 13 percent pure nickel. According to Canadian Sudbury nickel pig iron equals "dirty nickel", because the production process is not environmentally friendly, the carbon dioxide emissions being particularly high."