Hello Vale....look a bit to the north of sudbury for Voisey II. 

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https://www.thesudburystar.com/news/local-news/nickel-prices-surge-to-7-year-high-approaching-10-a-pound

Nickel prices surge to 7-year high, approaching $10 a pound

Driven in part by troubles with Vale’s Sudbury operations, nickel surged to a seven-year high on Wednesday.

Nickel – the key mineral found in Sudbury – topped US$9.53 a pound, the highest it’s been since 2014.

Bloomberg News said concerns that there’ll be less supply of the key industrial metal to meet resilient demand from economies reopening as the pandemic retreats sparked higher prices.

Vale SA, one of the top nickel producers, cut its production guidance for this year due to problems in Sudbury, while the world’s largest refined nickel producer, MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC, reported lower output in the third quarter.

The Philippines, the second-largest producer of the metal used in kitchenware and electric car batteries, said output this year may be 10 per cent less than the annual average, hampered by more frequent rains and fewer vessels coming in, Bloomberg said.

Vale on Tuesday said problems in Sudbury cut down its ability to produce nickel in 2021.

First, there was a two-month strike by Steelworkers Local 6500 in Sudbury that began June 1.

Then was damage to Vale’s Totten Mine in Sudbury last month when a cage damaged a shaft, trapping 39 workers underground for a short time. The company expects to have its Sudbury operations back to normal this month and resume its Totten complex early next year after mineshaft repairs, Bloomberg reported.

Vale said it had produced 30,200 tonnes of nickel, 22 per cent less than a year earlier, mostly due to problems in Sudbury.

The company is also one of the world’s major copper supplier, which has also been affected by the issues in Sudbury.

Vale remains Sudbury’s largest private-sector employer. With five mines, a mill, a smelter, a refinery and nearly 4,000 employees, it is also one of the largest integrated mining complexes in the world. Sudbury products include nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum group metals, gold and silver.

The company is scheduled to release earnings on Oct. 28.

These recent events have been good for the price of nickel, which, five years ago, was as low as $4 pound but has rebounded since then and especially in the past year.

“Buying filtered in over the course of (Wednesday’s) session on the back of supply-side stress ranging from Vale reduced production guidance, Norilsk’s weaker production report, and Vale’s Brazilian mine stoppage at Onca Puma,” Michael Cuoco, head of hedge-fund sales for metals and bulk materials at StoneX Group, told Bloomberg.

Prices were also helped by China’s softer nickel pig iron and refined nickel output figures for September and the return of Indonesian political export noise and adverse weather in the Philippines, he said. Nickel pig iron is a cheap substitute for refined nickel, which is used to make stainless steel — the largest end-use of nickel.

Bloomberg said Vale’s nickel output will likely reach 165,000 to 170,000 tons this year, down from a previous projection of 200,000 tons, the company. That came a day after the Brazilian mining giant said its Onca Puma mine is again suspended by the court.

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Meanwhile, the news agency said nickel production at Nornickel fell 23 per cent to 129,858 tons in the first three quarters from the same period a year earlier, according to a statement.

The prospect of lower supplies comes as stainless steel demand improved in recent months, with aerospace and oil-and-gas industries rebounding from last year’s COVID-19 nadir. Ongoing logistics woes from the pandemic, with shipping jams in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian basins, make it more difficult for consumers to get raw materials such as nickel, Bloomberg reported.

Expectations that there’ll be less nickel ores from top supplier Indonesia are also helping the price rally. The Southeast Asian nation indicated last month that it plans to either ban or tax exports of semi-processed products used to make stainless steel to keep more of the metal in the country and support a domestic industry focused on electric-vehicle batteries.

Bloomberg said Indonesia has been known to reverse its own policies since the first export ban on unprocessed mineral products in 2014, BloombergNEF analyst Allan Ray Restauro said in a note. Exports were permitted again in 2017, but only to companies with operational smelters. The ban on exports was then brought forward two years early to 2020.

dmacdonald@postmedia.com