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Thursday February 15, 4:33 PMChina's Jilin Nickel wants more partners in Nonoc planHONG KONG, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Jilin Nickel Group, China's second-largest producer of the metal, would need to find more partners if it were to invest in the Nonoc project in the Philippines, a company official said on Thursday.Jilin Nickel wants to increase its access to resources locally and overseas to secure materials for rising production of nickel, used in stainless steel, batteries and plating. An executive at Canada's Chemical Vapour Metal Refining Inc. (CVMR), which holds a 10 percent stake in Jilin Nickel, said on Wednesday the firm wanted to develop a 60,000 tonne-a-year integrated nickel project in the Philippines and was in talks with Philnico Industrial Corp. about reopening the Nonoc mine in the south of the country. CVMR, putting an initial price tag of $3 billion on the capital cost, said it hoped to include Jilin Nickel in a possible successful bid for the Nonoc project. By comparison, BHP Billiton said its Ravensthorpe project in Western Australia will produce 50,000 tonnes of nickel in concentrate at a capital of cost of $2.2 billion. But Jilin said it would want to enlist other investors in the project. "That is a bit too big for us. We would surely want other partners if we decided to invest in that project," the Jilin Nickel official said. The company would also need an explanation why Jinchuan Group Ltd., the top nickel producer in China, suspended a separate investment plan in the Nonoc project before it made a decision, he said. Jinchuan and the Baosteel Group, which is the country's biggest steel firm and a shareholder of Jinchuan, had agreed to invest $1 billion to revive the Nonoc complex, which had capacity to produce 41,000 tonnes of nickel annually. The two Chinese firms also had agreed to a debt settlement under which Philnico sought to settle some $300 million of debts that stemmed from the mid-1990s when the company bought Nonoc Mining from the Philippine government. But Philnico said last month the firm had ended joint venture talks with Jinchuan because the Chinese firm wanted a feasibility study that would have meant a delay to reopening a mine shut since 1982. A Jinchuan official said the Chinese firm had not decided whether it would keep the investment plan. World nickel prices hit a high of $38,950 a tonne last month. The price has risen 177 percent since the end of 2005 on tight global supply, and traded at $37,400 a tonne on Thursday. The Jilin Nickel official said the firm currently was not in talks with CVMR on the investment of the Nonoc project. "We have not formally talked about the Nonoc investment," he said. (Additional reporting by Nick Trevethan in Singapore) |
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