LME squeeze 'first innings' of nickel super-cycle: Canada Nickel CEO

yeah there were obviously a number of factors that caused that lme squeeze that we saw earlier this year but our belief is it was the first innings of another nickel super cycle nickel as a commodity goes through these super cycles every 15 to 20 years we went through one in the late 1960s another one in the late 1980s another one in the mid-2000s and now with the huge demand growth coming from the ev market on top of continued strong demand growth from its traditional uh demand sources and stainless steel uh you know this this spike we think is the first inning of something that's going to play out over the next three or four years and i can tell you from our discussions we're having with the auto and ev industry they're really waking up to the fact that there's there's very few new low sources new large sources of low carbon nickel out there particularly in safe jurisdictions what distinguishes a super cycle when it comes to nickel from just an upswing in a regular cycle yeah every commodity is is is cyclical um why nickel goes through these super cycles relative to some of the other commodities is twofold one it's always been the highest price base metal so in terms of easy substitution most of that's already been been worked out by consumers and so that in the combination with the fact that it continued to be a very high growth material for a very long period of time means that when these supply demand imbalances occur you need a much sharper rise in prices to bring the market back back into balance mark i um i took a couple of interesting statistics from your your notes that 60 of supply of nickel is controlled by china and more than 20 percent of supply that china doesn't control is controlled by russia that's a pretty difficult um bargaining situation for the west how does that complicate the picture moving forward given so much of the demand is likely to come from the west yeah no exactly one of the big suppliers into this space just to give you some statistics to you know to give you an idea of the scale of the issue that we're looking at um north america by 2030 this this supplier estimated that 300 000 tons of nickel per year will be needed just for the eevee market total nickel consumption in north america last year was just 150 000 tons and that's how much was produced as well in north america so somehow we need to triple uh production by 2030 our development project would produce over 40 000 tons of nickel and fully ramped up it'd be one of the five largest nickel sulfide operations globally when going um and we would need seven of those uh in production by the end of this decade so you know that's the gap that's out there and again the intensity of the discussions that have emerged over the last year as i think the auto and ev industry are really waking up to the raw material challenges that they're facing

Channel: CNBC International TV

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Length: 2min 46sec (166 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 08 2022