In this short series, the Investor Insight team takes a look at some of the critical elements of the periodic table, how they affect our lives today and into tomorrow and what our clients are doing in this exciting space.
Nothing endorses a metal’s prospectivity as well as the actions of the world’s largest miner. BHP, the owner of the Nickel West division in Western Australia, has ramped up its focus on securing access to more nickel supplies in far-flung corners of the world – its latest push is into the massive Kabanga nickel sulphide project in Tanzania.
Nickel, cobalt and the platinum group of elements (or PGEs) led by platinum and palladium have long had myriad industrial applications.
But is this group of elements’ unique properties like heat resistance, conductivity, malleability and density that make them so important in the evolving.
Currently, the nickel market is a US$20+ billion per year industry and forecast to grow significantly over the coming years, with Australia accounting for more than 11.5% the global nickel resources with predictions of contributing to more than 25%of new mined supply by 2030, according to a Roskill report.
Western Australia has always been host to some of the world’s highest-grade nickel sulphide deposits and the search is on in earnest for the next generation of supplies. St George Mining has just begun this year’s drilling campaign at its high-grade Mt Alexander project in the Goldfields, where among nickel sulphides it has also intersected good copper and PGE grades.
Further north in the Pilbara, Artemis Resources‘ Carlow Castle project boasts some impressive cobalt grades alongside the abundance of gold and copper.
And in Bosnia-Herzegovina, one of 2021’s best ASX IPOs Lykos Metals is preparing to drill its exciting Sockovac nickel project for the first time. In addition to chasing historic high-grade nickel drill hits, Lykos will be hoping to confirm the presence of cobalt and zinc-lead as identified from an extensive rock chip sampling program.
