Saturday Morning Stuffies “We’re at a turning point,” said Mr. Pathe, 49. “We got smaller and we are now positioned to start growing, focused on our Cuban properties and on our technology and ability to innovate."
It will be a sharp turn if the bombastic Mr. Musk has the dynamics of the nickel market right. During his presentation last month, he said Tesla’s appetite for batteries would soon eat up half of all the nickel currently produced each year.
“In order to scale, we really need to make sure that we’re not constrained by total nickel availability," said Mr. Musk at the Battery Day event. "I actually spoke with the CEOs of the biggest mining companies in the world and said, ‘Please make more nickel, it’s very important.’ ”Mr. Musk had called CEOs at Brazil’s Vale and Russia’s Norilsk Nickel, the world’s largest producers. He didn’t phone Mr. Pathe last month, although the Sherritt CEO says the company has a good relationship with Tesla and strong ties to Asian automakers. Sherritt’s output of metals is only 10 per cent of what Vale and Norilsk crank out, but the Canadian company is a leader in extracting nickel from laterite deposits, the rich red clays found in tropical locations such as Cuba.
The world currently consumes 2.3 million tonnes of nickel annually. Data from U.K. consulting firm Wood McKenzie shows that 70 per cent is used to make stainless steel. Only 5 per cent goes toward electric vehicle batteries. Wood McKenzie projects that within 20 years batteries will account for 35 per cent of nickel production, a forecast that is central to Sherritt’s growth strategy. The move to electric vehicles is a fundamental change in an industry where fortunes are made and lost as demand for commodities rises and falls.
Going forward, Mr. Pathe says, Sherritt plans to scale up production from its properties in Cuba. He also expects to see increasing demand for the company’s technology. Sherritt has done proprietary work developing pressure hydrometallurgy, a process that separates metals from ore. Its systems are now licensed to 40 plants around the world. Mr. Pathe describes the technology as a hidden jewel within Sherritt.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-sherritt-ceo-pins-future-on-demand-for-nickel-for-electric-car/