10 10 Page 10 Electric V ehicle Battery Demand propels future nickel demand Contd on pg 12 By Frank Giorno Market analyst s for nickel agree that the demand for nickel is growing and stockpiles that caused a glut in 2017 are shrinking two signs that bode well for the Sudbury mining cluster Early signs of a strengthening demand for nickel surfaced last fall in October 2017 when Bloomber g News wrote about the role the electric car battery will play in boosting the demand for nickel Bloomber g focused on the need for nicke l sulphate a key in gredient in lithiumion batteries that could see demand increase 50 percent to 3 million metric tons by 2030 Nickel sulphate is what Sudbury pro duces It is a frst class high grade of nickel and it is the grade of nickel electric car manufacturers need for their batteries Saad Rahim chief economist at T rafgura said in an interview with Bloomber g while other battery met als such as cobalt and lithiu m have more than doubled since the start of 2017 nickel prices had been subdued because of lar ge inventories but the stockpiles are receding When you look structurally we should start to get bullish now Ra him said Are you going to be able to meet that demand when the time comes given under investment in the supply side Forecasts by Glencore which operates Sudbury Integrated Nickel Operations also expect that nickel production will need to increa se 12 million tons by 2030 equal to more than half of cur rent global output to keep up with de mand from the battery industry In November 2017 KitcoCom report ed incre ased sales of nickel in the Chi nese futures market which shot up in response to similar gains by the Lon don Metal Exchange What were seeing is a reaction to a new demand market for nickel in electric cars frst in London then in Shanghai nickel said Amy Li a metals analyst for National Australia Bank Nickel companies globally are reposi tioning themselves for future demand for nickel in the development of elec tric car batteri es that should peak by 2025 according to metal market ana lysts In Sudbury V ale and Glencore are currently upgrading their mining fa cilities some of the upgrades have been in the works for some time and could be completed at just the right moment as the electric car industry appears to be accelerating towards a share of the vehicles on the road V ale and Glencore s Sudbury In tegrated Nickel Operations have received board approval for major mine development projects in the Sudbury Basin V ale is proceeding with a C760 million phase one de velopment of its Copper Clif Deep project Glencore is moving ahead with a 700 million US development of Onaping Depth While the recent buzz about nickel use in batteri es has captured the imagination of the nickel indus try today s demand for the metal is still dominated by the production of stainless steel Market experts say stainless steel accounts for 70 percent of nickel de mand today while batteries use just 5 percent In total global demand for nickel is growing at a healthy rate of 67 percent a year This has been fu eled by China s resur gent boom in stainless steel demand over the past two years which is expected to con tinue into 2018 The forecast by the International Nickel Study Group INSG are cau tiously optimistic about the growth in demand for nickel in 2018 In early June 2018 the London Met als Exchange reported that nickel stockpiles had shrunk to 278800 tonnes from where they were al most a year ago when they stood at 389154 tonnes According to the International Stain Page 10 W e innovate educate supply research and service the mining world inv estsudbur y ca r esour cefulcity Page 1 1 W e innovate educate supply research and service the mining world inv estsudbur y ca r esour cefulcity