SHANGHAI, Apr 20 (SMM) — This is a roundup of news in the nickel industry for last week.

Nornickel's Oktyabrsky copper-nickel mine to fully resume production before end-April

Nornickel has resumed mining at the Oktyabrsky mine after the flood on April 12. Production was resumed ahead of schedule as the drainage work was completed. The mine recovery plan was updated, and it is expected that Oktyabrsky (annual ore output- 5 million mt) will fully resume production by the end of April. Production load has reached 60% of the planned level.

The resumption of Tamirski mine ( with an annual output at 4.3 million mt) remains unchanged in early June. Senior vice president Nikolai Utkin commented on the recent incident that their strategy was to start production in the entire surrounding area and enhancing recycling to achieve industrial safety and meet environmental standards.

Norilsk Concentrator (NOF) Rostechnadzor is under inspections and internal audits. The copper production (with an annual production capacity of about 4 million mt) that was stopped for inspection and maintenance was resumed on March 15. The company formulated a plan to restore the second decentralised ore beneficiation line in stages (with an annual production capacity of about 5.2 million mt), which was closed after February 20.

Nornickel will expand the production of nickel sulphate, nickel output to increase to 75,000 mt in 2023

Norilsk announced on April 13 that it would expand the production of nickel products at its Harjavalta plant in Finland. Due to the increasing demand for battery raw materials in the electric vehicle market, Finnish Minerals Group, BASF, and the Finnish utility company Fortum are currently forming a cluster of electric vehicle battery companies in Finland.

Norilsk's sales director Anton Berlin hopes to meet the growing needs of these companies in the next few years.

Nickel sulphate is one of the raw materials used to produce the precursor in the ternary cathode material. It provides nickel raw materials for ternary lithium batteries. The trend of higher nickel content in the new energy vehicle market means that the consumption of nickel sulphate will continue to increase.

Harjavalta produces 65,000 mt of nickel products each year, of which 10,000 mt comes from nickel sulphate solution. This time, the Harjavalta plant will spend tens of millions of dollars to expand the production of nickel sulphate solution. It plans to increase the production of nickel products to 75,000 mt by 2023 and 100,000 mt by 2026, including at least 40,000 mt of nickel sulphate acid. Judging from the current nickel usage by each car, the solution will be enough to produce 1 million electric cars.

GEM to ECOPROBM with over 176,000 mt of NCA and NCM high-grade nickel ternary precursor material

On the evening of April 15, GEM announced that in order to lock the order expectation and guarantee the implementation of the company’s high-grade nickel precursor production and sales targets in 2021-2023, the company signed an agreement with ECOPROBMCO., LTD over the supply of NCA and NCM high-grade nickel precursors for new energy power batteries in 2021-2023.

The company will supply ECOPROBM with over 176,000 mt of NCA and NCM high-grade nickel ternary precursor materials in 2021-2023. The supply will be no less than 30,000 mt in 2021, 73,000 mt in 2022, and more than 73,000 mt in 2023, which will further grow based on the subsequent procurement contracts. NCA and NCM respectively refer to ternary materials composed of nickel, cobalt, aluminum and the materials of nickel, cobalt and manganese.