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High nickel price to persist for the short-term - ARM CEO Andre Wilkens
In an interview on ClassicFM @ Monday, 26 March 2007
[miningmx.com] -- THE high nickel price is anticipated to be sustainable in the immediate future because of a short-term deficit of the metal used in stainless steel production, said Andre Wilkens, chief executive of African Rainbow Minerals.
Prices are at highs of $46,500/tonne because of the short-term shortfall in supply, Wilkens said on the Classic Business Day week-nightly radio show.
“There is currently a one month stock of nickel and we believe that the price will continue to rise but only for a short-term,” he said.
African Rainbow Minerals shares the Nkomati Nickel project in South Africa with Canada's LionOre, which is the target of a friendly takeover bid by Xstrata.
ARM is excited about Xstrata’s bid for LionOre because it deepened the relationship the South African company had with one of the world's largest mining companies, Wilkens
said.
London-listed Xstrata announced that it had entered into an agreement to buy all of the issued and outstanding shares of nickel producer LionOre for $15,96 a share, valuing the transaction at $4-billion, or R28,9-billion.
Wilkens had told Miningmx the Nkomati project may be accelerated if Xstrata became its joint owner.
“Part of our coal joint venture with Xstrata was to look for other opportunities that would enable us to work with the company in future and that is why we were so excited about the announcement,” said Wilkens.
ARM is partnering Xstrata Coal in the Goedgevonden coal mine, a process which created ARM Coal.
Wilkens said a feasibility study into increasing Nkomati's nickel output to 20,000 tonnes/year from 5,000 tonnes/year would be presented to the board for consideration by the end of June.
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