The new demand for nickel that’s being driven by electric vehicles (EVs) will require a low-carbon footprint and high-grade mineralization, according to Stuart Harshaw, president and CEO of Nickel Creek Platinum (TSX:NCP,OTCQB:NCPCF).
“The challenge is it’s got to be very high-grade nickel,” he noted. “It’s got to be high purity, and this high purity has really been dominated by the sulfide world. And the sulfide world has been shrinking for the last 10 years as the dominance in the laterite world from Indonesia (expanded).”
He explained that projects in Indonesia are using high-pressure acid leach technology, which extracts pure nickel from laterite. The process is harmful to the environment, using coal fire with a high-carbon impact. For Harshaw, the challenge in supplying nickel to the EV sector is that nickel production has to have a low-carbon footprint to align with global energy transition goals.
The CEO said Nickel Creek’s solution to this is carbon sequestration, which allows for low-impact production of high-grade nickel. “We actually produce a very, very low-carbon-footprint nickel because we absorb carbon dioxide as part of our tailings process,” he said. “The challenge we have is to bring new sulfide projects into play that have this low-carbon footprint and can feed into the EV market.”
Nickel Creek’s Nickel Shäw project in Canada’s Yukon contains significant nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum and palladium, which are all important metals for the EV market. The next phase of the project is a feasibility study and the beginning of permitting process. Once that’s complete, Nickel Creek Platinum will have a development-ready project that can meet the EV market’s needs, with a low-carbon footprint and the ability to go directly into smelting technology to produce pure nickel for the market, Harshaw said.
Watch the full interview with Stuart Harshaw, president, CEO and director of Nickel Creek Platinum, above.
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