Centaurus to acquire Vale’s nickel sulfide project

Australia-listed miner Centaurus Metals Ltd has reached an agreement with Vale to acquire the latter’s Jaguar nickel sulfide project in the Carajás mineral province, northern Brazil, it said on Tuesday August 6.

The agreement, requiring an upfront cash payment of $250,000, also included an asset swap between the two companies. Centaurus will transfer the Salobo West copper-gold project, also in the Carajás mineral province, to Vale.

The two companies also entered a future offtake agreement giving Vale the right to purchase 100% of production from the Jaguar sulfide project.

The Jaguar nickel sulfide deposit, a high-nickel content and at-surface nickel deposit, contains 315,000 tonnes of nickel in metal, Centaurus said.

The acquisition of the Jaguar project will give Centaurus further exposure to a metal with “exceptional supply-demand fundamentals and a robust outlook”, the company said, pointing to nickel’s use in the stainless steel industry and growing consumption by the lithium-ion battery sector.

The three-month nickel price on the London Metal Exchange has been in an upswing since early July and hit a one-year high of $15,025-15,030 per tonne on Tuesday August 6, largely due to a promising outlook for the metal from investors amid a series of supply disruption concerns.

“We believe the acquisition of the Jaguar nickel project will provide the same opportunity for Centaurus as there simply aren’t many nickel sulfide projects globally of this quality that provide the opportunity to fast-track a nickel sulfide development ready to meet the growing market shortfall,” Centaurus managing director Darren Gordon said in a statement. 

Vale produced 45,000 tonnes of nickel in metal in the second quarter in April-June this year, registering a 32% decline year on year and reflecting maintenance halts in Canada and Indonesia as well as a suspension at its Onça Puma plant in Brazil.

What to read next
The most recent financial results published by base metals mining companies highlight just how inflation is affecting profit margins, with increasing wages, financing costs and input prices all hitting profits, sources told Fastmarkets in the week to Thursday March 28
Century Aluminum is among those selected to start award negotiations for up to $500 million in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act funding to build a new aluminium smelter, the company said on Monday March 25
Participants in the copper concentrates market are struggling to comprehend an “unstoppable” decline in treatment and refinement charges (TC/RCs), with every week bringing spot deals at fresh lows and rumors each “crazier” than the last, sources have told Fastmarkets
The US Department of Energy selected five base metals projects to receive more than $900 million in federal investment from its Industrial Demonstration Program (IDP), leading to a reduction of four million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions annually, according to a statement by the Department on Monday March 25
Aluminium producer and recycler Constellium announced on Tuesday March 12 that the company is moving to test hydrogen utilization at an industrial scale as a power source in its casthouses
Fastmarkets has corrected its MB-ALU-0002 alumina index, fob Australia and its MB-ALU-0010 alumina inferred index, fob Brazil, which were published incorrectly on Monday March 18.