Nickel demand a boost for mine
A GLOBAL demand for nickel could accelerate plans for a new mine at Greenvale.
The growth in the electric vehicle market has prompted the mineral’s surge and Australian Mines Ltd, which is trying to progress its Sconi Project, could stand to benefit.
The company’s managing director, Ben Bell, said the nickel price trajectory would make the Sconi cobalt-scandium-nickel mine and two-million-tonne-per-year processing plant “more financially viable” and attractive to investors.
It is estimated 500 jobs will be created during the construction of the mine, with 350 full-time employees needed once completed.
The project stacking up could lead to other similar projects in the area.
TOWNSVILLE must create “downstream” manufacturing jobs and reduce miners’ electricity costs in order to take advantage of the global surge in demand for nickel and other key minerals.
The demand for nickel has been rising and global stocks of the mineral are falling due to the use of the substance in electric vehicle batteries.
Townsville’s main nickel interests lie in Clive Palmer’s mothballed Queensland Nickel refinery, which the mining magnate reckons he can re-open in 2020, and the Australian Mines Sconi Project in Greenvale.
Queensland is a relatively minor player in nickel mining, with Western Australia holding 96 per cent of the resource.
Australian Mines managing director Ben Bell said the nickel price trajectory would make its Sconi – scandium-cobalt-nickel – mine and 2 million tonne per year processing plant “more financially viable” and attractive to investors. It is estimated 500 jobs will be created during the construction of the mine, with 350 full-time employees.
Mr Bell said the Sconi project getting up would make it more economical for other miners to tap into deposits in the area.
“If you’ve got us plus another two or three mines in the area then the requirement for earth moving maintenance people or contractors or suppliers will increase because there are multiple customers in the one spot.”
Copperstring founder and executive director John O’brien said emerging trends in new sources of demand for minerals such as nickel highlighted that commodity prices fluctuated, which presented both risks and opportunities
“The Mt Isa to Townsville minerals export supply chain needs to position itself to take advantage of the peaks and weather the troughs,” he said.
“This is done by reducing key input costs, such as energy, to ensure the productivity of the supply chain is maximised and investment in … processing is encouraged.
“Minerals processing is very energy intensive and as an export industry it requires … competitively priced ore and competitively priced energy.”
Queensland Resources Council chief executive Ian Macfarlane said to take full advantage of nickel demand downstream manufacturing jobs would need to be created, especially when products were premium priced.
“We are seeing growth for lithium-ion batteries and the Queensland Government and the Townsville Enterprise are backing the Imperium3 resources proposal to build a 15 GWH lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility in Townsville,” he said.
A report, released by Austrade yesterday, found Queensland was poised to be able to take advantage of China-us trade tensions by exporting rare metals used in phones, batteries and medical tech to the US.